Edward Berdoe - St. Bernard's - The Romance of a Medical Student

“Was that the rough little terrier which followed Dr. Arnold in the Laboratory when he was starving? I have heard him laugh at the misplaced confidence of the brute,” said Elsworth.

“The very animal,” replied the story-teller.

“But, I say, you had no licence, you know!” said Wilks, a shy, curate-looking freshman, who belonged to several humanitarian societies, and thought all this very dreadful.

The roar of laughter with which the delicious joke was received made poor Wilks blush to the roots of his hair, as one of the audience cried:

“Licence be hanged! Do you think we care for the fanatics who impede our work? Let them show themselves at St. Bernard’s! Crowe has one, because it looks well to the public; but don’t you preach, Wilks, or you’ll do for yourself. Go on.”

“Now when I was at work on the physiology part of the business, I never thought of the cruelty, but now it all came upon me horribly. My position was bad enough, but these poor dogs – animals, like ourselves – they were in cruel agony without food or water. I was only not on a feather bed, that was all; they were dying in awful torment. I thought my imprisonment was all arranged by a higher Power, to let me know what I was doing; and God knows I suffered shame and mental distress that night. I fell asleep at last, though the moans and the clockwork worked themselves into my dreams. All at once a loud noise aroused me. I started up, and to my unutterable horror, saw the arm of the corpse on the coffin lid slowly rising, and pointing its rigid hand at me in the dim light. I am no coward, as you know; but my heart was in my mouth as I stared with starting eyeballs at the ghastly object, and then I saw what had happened. The counterpoise of the pulley had slipped down, and dragged up the right arm of the corpse. It was the falling of the weight on the floor of the vault that awoke me. Just then the clock struck three, and I left the arm pointing its stiff fingers at me and went to sleep again – ‘to sleep, to dream.’ I dreamt that two awful-looking burkers had brought a subject in, had taken their gold from the place where it lay ready for them, and had caught sight of me. ‘Why, Bill,’ said one, ‘here’s a chance; let us smother this bloke, and he’ll be worth another five-pun-note to us!’ ‘Right you are, Tom!’ said the other. And they proceeded to carry out their diabolical plans, when I awoke. Horrible night-mare! I shudder now when I think of it.”

“Rather creepy, I must say,” said little Murphy.

“Well, I could not sleep any more after that, and lay a-meditating. After all, I thought, why shouldn’t I have been murdered and given up to science, as I had done with those wretched dogs in the next room? Did not the same Power frame their bodies as mine? Were not the processes Nature so lovingly and carefully carried on in their sensitive little frames just as beautiful and well adapted as those which went on in me? I repented, my lads, that night, and I have never spoken to Crowe since, and have done with that sort of work.”

“Ah! you are a sentimentalist,” they cried; “but tell us how you got out.”

“Oh, I got through the night somehow – an end comes to everything sooner or later; but the scoundrelly porters were later than usual that morning before they opened the place. Jim, the sweeper, was in a beastly funk, and implored me not to tell anybody, because it was his place to look round the vaults before closing; but he says the fog had got into him, and the other porter had asked him to go and have some hot spiced ale with him, and he was anxious he should not change his mind.”

It was getting late, and Mrs. Harper knocked at the door with “Time! gentlemen; time!” Of course she was asked in and invited to have a toothful.

“As my spasms was just a-comin’ on, strange to say, gentlemen, as up the stairs I came, I don’t mind if I do. Just a thimbleful; no, Mr. Murphy! not a drop beyond the pretty part, and cold I’ll have it to-night. It does me most good when the liquor is strong. Here’s your very good ’ealth, gentlemen, and may you all have lots of practice when you’ve done with the ’orspital; and what’s more, lots of fees, and good ’uns.”

“Well done, missus,” said all the men; “you could not have wished us anything better.”

“And now, gentlemen, I thank you for your kindness, but shut up my house I must; so I hope you will pardon me if I ask you to clear out. Oh! lawks, Mr. Murphy; I ’opes to goodness the perlice won’t see this blessed board, nor these knockers and things. I chops up that there ‘Similar – attached Willa Residence’ to-morrow for the fires. I said you should have it for your party, but no more of it – not if I knows it. Now, gents! Good-night! good-night!” And she got rid of them, and they went rollicking home.

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.