Edward Berdoe

“ A growing conviction took hold of him that he was being prepared, by an unseen Hand, for some great work which would require all that self-command, that conviction of right, that neglect of selfish ease, which had come to him during these Spanish days. He had found that in the lowest of our race, there is lying dormant that spark of the Divine essence which needs but the call of sympathy to awaken. With these poor folk he had spent some of the happiest years of his life, among them had found many real friends, and had learned in their company a thousand things to enable him to benefit mankind. ”

“ Crowe’s present condition it set him wondering how much longer it would be ere he would be relieved of the now almost intolerable burden of a sick wife. Who stood a better chance with Mildred Lee than he, the old friend of the heiress’s father, himself her tutor? Admired by her for his science he knew he was—why not admired for himself, perhaps, if only free? He had never really loved his wife; he had married her for her fortune, and had been disappointed in its amount. He was not capable of loving anything but wealth and fame. ”

“ How often in the wards of the hospital or at the bedsides of out-door patients had he been moved by the contrast offered by the simple, sublime faith of some poor suffering Christian man or woman, whose sick-room was illumined by a light that never sprang from the human intellect, but rayed forth from the face of God Himself. Peace that yet was not indifference, cheerfulness that was not stoicism, made the chambers and the couches of these men and women unspeakably different from those of their unbelieving neighbours. ”

“ Elsworth knew Crowe did not like him. They had never quite got on together since he neglected to attend his experimental physiology class which met at church time on Sunday mornings in his own private laboratory—the chamber of horrors it was called. He could never bring himself to do so.
“Neither a fall nor a rise,” rejoined Elsworth, quietly; “nothing but a very matter-of-fact story of disgust with the noisy world of men, and a relish for a sojourn in the wilderness for study and meditation. Not quite without precedent in the history of civilisation, eh, Mr. Crowe?” ”

“ Graves were walking on the terrace smoking. To no one had he spoken, during these years of retirement, of the causes which had led him away from his haunts and profession; but these sweet women, with their sympathy which invited his confidence, soon heard his story; and in listening to it Mildred felt as Desdemona when Othello told his own; and listening, loved. Here, she thought, is a man with a heart and a conscience! All her life had been spent amongst selfish seekers after fame, wealth, or the amusements of life; men who cared not whom they overthrew could they but climb themselves ”

“ Elsworth was not in love with Linda in any true sense. He was attracted towards her by her brilliancy, wit, and mental powers. She was not beautiful if you analysed her form and features,—not one of the latter would have passed muster with an artist; yet, taken altogether, with intellect and grace beaming from her eyes, and influencing every movement, she was just the woman a clever man would fall in love with while in her presence. ”

“ Elsworth was amazed to find how the bull-fight cultus had permeated and moulded every Spanish mind. That it was a pastime, he knew; that it was a religion, he did not imagine till he had lived in Spain. The very landscapes were cruel; the mountains and rocks had no softness, they were all angles, with stern, hard outlines that seemed reflected in the Spanish nature. Man, modified by his surroundings, often formed the subject of his meditations. Here, if anywhere, cruelty would be apotheosized! ”

“ When it was found that Elsworth had quite disappeared, and nothing more was heard of him, many of the good sisters and kind-hearted nurses were really sorry to have lost him. None more so than Sister Agnes. Sister Agnes was the brightest, cleverest, and most devoted nurse that could be imagined. She never wearied of her work, never grew snappy and huffy, as the best of women will when worn and weary with hard work and watching. ”

“ Dr. Stanforth was considered a model hospital physician—for the students. They were ever the first in his thoughts; to touch one of them was to touch the apple of his eye. He lived for them (and by them) , yet he never allowed any of his patients to suspect anything of the kind. There was nothing he grudged his pupils, and they consequently worshipped him. To serve any of his boys he would sacrifice the feelings of any interesting bit of “clinical material” that came in his way, and he boasted that he turned out more proficient practitioners than any one of his colleagues. ”

“ Now if the charitable Christian public chooses to crack its nuts with steam hammers, we cannot offer any objection. It seems costly, but that is their business; but if they think their nuts can be cracked by no other and less costly method, they are very much in the dark. Let alone the fact of so much unconscious cruelty, wrought in the name of charity and mercy. Of that we have said enough. The fees for a complete hospital curriculum average a hundred guineas for the four years’ course, an absurdly small sum for such an education. ”

“ Philosophy was good for men, the wisdom of the sages had often balanced a wavering mind, and strengthened the fibre of men to dare and do great things; but it was not possible for the masses of mankind to be so sustained any more than it was possible they could be all fed and housed like princes. Was not this contemned Christian religion which he had been helping to push aside, philosophy made easy for simple folk, unlearned and without culture? ”

“ Poor fellow! he died in harness, a victim to his long years of hard work in toxicology. In a fit of depression he swallowed prussic acid, just after leaving the profession an exhaustive treatise on its uses!
Such were the lectures at St. Bernard’s, and so passed the time which should have been spent in acquiring information for which the prescribed four years’ course was all too short to gather. No wonder that so many men hold hospital lectures to be almost useless, and attend them no more frequently than they are obliged, when they are generally only occasions of childish amusement. ”

“ On behalf of the suffering humanity soon to become dependant upon such men for their help in sickness, a revolution in such a false system of education is no less urgently demanded. Unpleasant as the work of the dissecting, post-mortem rooms, and hospital wards, may seem to the outside world, its daily recurrence makes it so familiar to all engaged in it that it very soon ceases to be any more unpleasant than many other occupations. ”

“ It was this same Wilson who so horrified Elsworth by compelling him to tear off the thumb-nail of a patient for whom such an operation was necessary, without the use of any anæsthetic. “If we gave chloroform for every trifling job like that,” he said, “we should have enough to do.” He had become so case-hardened against feeling pain in others that he could only attribute to weakness and incompetence that hesitation to cause a single unnecessary pang in any sentient being which is the unvarying qualification of all the greatest and noblest men and women of whom we know anything. ”

“ She has been waiting probably two or three hours for the interview, for another hour or more she must be stethoscoped, percussed, pounded and pummelled, while the students are picking up from her emaciated and wasting frame the elements of their profession. Nobody at the hospital supposes for a moment they can do her any good, but she offers herself in her ignorance, day after day, a sacrifice on the altar of science, that her abnormal breathing sounds, and other phenomena of disease may teach young men how to earn a respectable living. ”

“ Poor beggars; in ten years’ time seven-tenths of them would be toiling up rotten staircases, or groping in coal mines, visiting patients at an average of nine-pence-halfpenny a head, or holding parish appointments, and doing Friendly Societies’ work at half that rate; while of the other three-tenths, one would be starving in two gloomy rooms in a West End square, the second might make his fortune by marrying a rich wife, and the other work his way to distinction late in life by an ultimate succession to the permanent staff of his own hospital. ”

“ Now, by a beautiful instance of the law of compensation ever active in Nature, just as men are voting enthusiasm bad form, women are taking up the work men are too limp and too selfish to perform, and the spectacle is presented to the eye of hundreds of noble, clever, earnest, indefatigable women coming forward to fill the places which men decline, and leaving work more congenial to their habits and tastes, because men lack the energy and sympathy required to effect the necessary reforms. ”

“ Crowe’s mind, “Were I but free, I should not despair of winning Mildred Lee and her wealth!”
These are dangerous thoughts to enter any man’s mind who has a troublesome wife, especially when that man has no other consideration than for himself alone. He wandered out of the Alhambra grounds and strolled along the road, over the hill, past the massive old red towers which had seen so many tragedies and had heard so often the din of battle for their mastery. ”

“ For one such opponent of Christian teaching who lives an exemplary life in spite of his want of faith, a thousand quiet, self-sacrificing men and women could be found. Of course, philosophy and high culture will do something for mankind. It did something for the pagan world, it does much for the Buddhist and Confucian peoples. But the note of all these philosophers is Melancholy, and the note of all true Christian folk is Cheerfulness. “Christianity alone stands between the human intellect and madness.” ”

“ All its professors but one or two were agnostics, or even atheists. Some were serious, thoughtful men, who grieved they could not believe; while others, as far as they dared, made a jest of the most sacred themes. Young men—and especially young medical men—are prone to copy very closely the speech and the modes of thought of those who are in authority over them, and the school took its tone from the many brilliant men of science on its teaching staff. The microscope, the test-tube, and the scalpel had dissipated much of young Elsworth’s faith, and he had not cared to conceal it. ”

“ Then the brain man came along, and said the liver was to ordinary doctors what the devil was to theologians, a very ill-used personality indeed, and generally a mere cover for a diagnosis which puzzled them. For his part, he had decided the mischief to be in the grey matter of one of the frontal convolutions of the brain. The gynæcologist laughed at all the others, and declared that if his delightful branch of science received more attention in the medical world, the profession would make the healing art worthy of the age, which at present it was very far from being. ”

“ I know how faculties come to us by reaching after them—know that the craftsman’s deftness is the result of long practice and education of sense and muscle; but I cannot find in the highest craftsman’s hand a single extra nerve or tendon, or a better articulation, than I find in the clumsiest day-labourer’s fist which never knew the use of a more delicate instrument than a spade. ”

“ When the students enter the wards of the hospitals for regular work with the staff, they have to devote a considerable portion of their time to the business of minutely recording the family history, physical signs and symptoms, and the treatment of each patient allotted to them. These records are valuable for reference, and still more so for the education of the pupils. They accustom the student to habits of careful observation; and as clinical work is by far the most important factor in his training, the man who does most of this stands the best chance of thoroughly learning his business. ”

“ To be a competent doctor at all, one must feel an overwhelming interest in the mysteries of health and disease. To be a distinguished doctor the interest must become a lifelong passion; and this, alas! too often closes in the mind of its possessor against the access of any other of the enthusiasms that lay hold of men.
Neither the Church nor the Bar demands so much of its disciples as does Medicine. They allow far more scope for the pursuit of letters than the healing art. We expect a clergyman or a barrister to be a literary man. ”

“ But cold water and fresh air, wholesome food and temperance, want few aids from medicine for the ills of man. The wiser the physician the fewer the drugs, and by the length of your doctor’s prescription you may estimate the shallowness of his pretence to wisdom.
Sanitary engineers have done so much for the improvement of the health of towns, that the low death-rate in London and 181 other English cities is more to be attributed to their agency than to improved methods of medical treatment. The wonder is that Spain and Italy are not continually decimated by pestilence. ”