At what awful cost all this was to the "material" he never troubled to estimate. The scandal at last got too strong for St. Bernard's, and he was soon promoted "out of the opportunities of his art"--as he complained.
"Sister, let us have another patient!" said Dr. Stanforth, on one occasion, just as one might say, "Hand me another chair," or "Bring me another book." It was in the private operating room at St. Bernard's, screened off from the ward specially set apart for women. The assistant physician of this important department had invented a new apparatus for administering anæsthetics, and it was tried that day for the first time--tried on hospital patients first, of course. It promised materially to assist in bringing the patient under the influence of the anæsthetic with rapidity and comfort. Being a complicated machine, with various ingeniously constructed valves, it was not by any means an easy thing to manage, and the least error might have fatal consequences; it would never do, therefore, to use such a thing out of doors till all its bearings had been taken at the hospital, where any mishap could be adroitly attributed to some other cause. Long before one dare use such a thing on Lady Millefleurs, its capabilities and little eccentricities must be exhibited on the unimportant carcass of Eliza Smith; and so it fell out that day that a little knot of students, interested in giving chloroform or ether, with due address, were assembled to see the working of this pretty bit of mechanism.