A gentleman who in a duel was rather scratched than wounded, sent for a chirurgeon, who, having opened the wound, charged his man with all speed to fetch such a salve from such a place in his study.
"Why?" said the gentleman, "is the hurt so dangerous?"
"Oh, yes," answered the chirurgeon; "if he returns not in poste haste, the wound will cure itself."--_Thos. Fuller._
Now being from Paris but recently, This fine young man would show his skill; And so they gave him, his hand to try, A hospital patient extremely ill. --_Oliver Wendell Holmes._
Mrs. Sarah Podger was receiving-room nurse at St. Bernard's, and one of the most important officials of the charity. The receiving-room is immediately within the main door of the hospital, and when an accident or other case of emergency is brought in, the patient is taken straight to this waiting hall. He first encounters Mrs. Podger, who is on the alert, having been summoned by the bell the gate porter rings when the case passes his lodge.
Mrs. Podger is at least fifty years old, is short, stout, and good-tempered. Her face is florid; she is not a convert to Blue Ribbonism; to use her own expression, she "leaves all that there rot to the sisters and fine ladies who play at nussin'." She is of the good old school, "before all these fads and fooleries was got up;" she "don't hold with none of 'em" "and don't you go for to tell me," she used to say, when questioned, "as nussin' can be properly done on milk and water. Milk-and-water nussin' is all very well for them as ain't got nothin' the matter with 'em, but folks as has to be treated at St. Bernard's is too serious bad to get on with teetotal notions. Teetotal is all very well for the mumps; but lor' bless yer, my dear, how are yer goin' to nuss a capital hoperation on tea, leastways not without a drop of somethin' in it?"
Mrs. Podger is first of all the obsequious and humble servant of the house governor, the resident staff, and the doctors attached to the charity. To these she is a very dragon of virtue and propriety. To them she protests against all larks on the part of the young students, and is never seen to smile at them in their presence. The hospital and the good of the patients is her sole love and desire. Not Jerusalem was holier to the Jew than St. Bernard's to Mrs. Podger, when any of these were in her presence. But her heart was with the boys, and her pockets in that lavender print gown found its account in keeping well in with them. "The boys," as she used to call the students, who were always lounging about the receiving-room, waiting for somebody to fall off a scaffold, or get run over, boasted that Podger could teach them more than all the staff put together. Where was the man who had not learned his practical surgery at Podger's hands? Did he shine in his bandaging, it was Podger who had taught him to make those neat, smooth turns. How would that "foreign body in the eye," as was designated the bit of coke dust in the governor's organ of vision, have been extracted just now by the house surgeon of the day, if Podger had not given him that gentle nudge and that knowing look and told him exactly what to do, and let him have all the credit of doing it? If Podger liked the students, they on their part found Podger indispensable to them. Without her the receiving-room was the house without the mistress--the whole business went wrong. Now Podger was capital for the students, and well deserved all her tips and all her drops of gin and whisky; but you would not have appreciated Podger at her proper value had you tumbled off an omnibus, and been carried to her place of business, say at five o'clock, when the staff was dining, or at ten, when the house surgeon of the week had his little card party in his rooms. Well, yes, it would have been all right if the friend who went with you had "exhibited," say, half an ounce of silver coinage for application to the palm of Podger's hand, right or left; otherwise you would have been placed on that black leather couch in the corner there under the shelf of lint and tow, and you would have been weary waiting in that receiving-room, counting the various form of splints hanging round it, and listening to the groans of other sufferers waiting till dinner was over, or the game of cribbage finished, for your wounds and bruises to be attended to.