"The Doctrine of Descent." Oscar Schmidt.
Browning: "Ring and Book," vol. iv. p. 60.
"What! do they study?" "No, father, but they feel!" "Feel! I comprehend thee not!" _Sir. E. B. Lytton._
Such men, in other men's calamities, are, as it were, in season, and are ever on the loading part; not so good as the dogs that licked Lazarus' sores, but like flies that are still buzzing upon anything that is raw.--_Bacon_.
As a resident dresser, it often devolved upon our hero to reason with troublesome patients who offered opposition to the methods of treatment proposed to be adopted in their particular case.
One day an ambulance deposited at the door of the hospital, an Irishman, who had just fallen from a high scaffold, and had been carried thither by the police.
Dr. Wilson had carefully examined the poor man, and had determined to amputate one of his legs. Dr. Wilson had what has been aptly termed the "_furor operativus_" the operative madness. He had a burning desire to do everything that anybody had ever been known to do on the human subject in the way of surgery. He did not want his period of office to expire till he had had an opportunity of adding to his list of cases the most difficult and dangerous operations set down in books. Now the Hibernian subject just brought in would do very well for a trial of a new method of amputating the leg at the thigh; and as the man objected to any such interference with the integrity of his ambulatory apparatus, the strongest pressure was brought to bear upon his obstinacy.
"Send for Father O'Grady, he'll manage it. I won't lose my chance if I can help it!" And the newly appointed house-surgeon looked defiantly round on his little band of dressers, who shared his anxiety that so good an operation should not slip through his fingers without a final effort. Pat was determined he would not have his leg off. "What would he be good for with a wooden leg? How would the wife and childher go on if he were maimed like that? Let me be out of this! By the mercy o' God and His blessed Mother I'll get well again and kape me leg. Just boind it up, mates, and let me go. God bless ye all, I know ye mane it for me good. Don't be thinkin' me a coward: it isn't that at all. Ye might cut me in little paices, if it wasn't for the missis and the bits of childher." And poor Pat began to cry bitterly, not for his pain, which was bad enough, but at the recollection of his dear ones at home, for whom he could do no more work for many a week, perhaps might never climb a ladder again.