There is no strange handwriting on the wall, Thro’ all the midnight hum no threatening call, Nor on the marble floor the stealthy fall Of fatal footsteps. All is safe. Thou fool, The avenging deities are shod with wool! —W. Allen Butler. But the sinner who would fain Cover murder’s crimson stain, Still shall find his steps pursued By inquisitors for blood, Due to the unavenged dead, Our malison devotes his head. —J. Anstice, translated from Æschylus. The last week in September usually sees all the teachers and staff of the hospitals back at their posts. Mr. Crowe and Dr. Graves were again in harness, and the patients who had been the objects of ’prentice work now came under master hands. These long vacations are grand times for the junior staff; then they are the lords of the territory, and can try everything without fear of interference from their superiors who do not want any more information on what perhaps interests their juniors keenly. Mr. Mole had been working away patiently and secretly. He had a vast accumulation of notes of facts, symptoms, and tests on the action of Lorchelin and Bulbosin on man and animals; and what was of equal importance, no one had apparently All Dr. Sones’ efforts to find chemical tests for the poisons which could be absolutely relied upon had been fruitless. Mr. Mole was, however, so satisfied with his physiological tests that he declared himself ready to detect the deadly alkaloids under whatever circumstances they might be administered. Suspecting Mr. Crowe of entertaining a very limited amount of affection for his wife, and knowing how he must estimate the burden of her long-continued illness, he imparted his suspicions to Janet Spriggs, and bade her tell him everything fresh that happened. But there was little to tell. A caution was given to her that should her mistress suddenly die, two or three handkerchiefs were to be dropped as by accident in the remains of the last food of which she had partaken, and especially in anything that might be vomited. These handkerchiefs were then to be given to him. The winter session had commenced about a month; the lecturers had all returned to their posts and patients, and the work at St. Bernard’s was again in full swing. In all the wards you heard little hints, jokes, and anecdotes of the holiday tours and adventures of the doctors—very impressive to the students, very suggestive of the good things in store for them when they had made their mark and could take expensive trips. The poor assistant surgeons and physicians had been compelled to stick to their work all through the vacation, and heard with rather mitigated relish the stories told by their chiefs of Norway, Switzerland, Italy, or Spain. Mr. Crowe was full of the latter country, and the backward condition of everything there. He found nothing doing of importance for research but some Pasteur inoculations. He had visited many of the Spanish hospitals and schools of medicine, but everything was backward in comparison with France or Germany. Tho Spaniards, he thought, were unwilling As epilepsy, hysteria, convulsions, and even insanity have been known to follow the introduction of this interesting parasite into the human body, it must be admitted that Professor Montijo was one of the heroic school, and merited all Mr. Crowe’s eulogiums. Some of the alumni who listened to these accounts of continental practice thought that the first man was the only true hero of the lot. He, Abraham-like, had been willing to sacrifice his own son “for the good of humanity.” As for the mule-driver and his exposed brain, they had done quite as good things at St. Bernard’s more than once; while in regard to the hydatid and tape-worm germs in beef and pork, that was an every-day business down in the out-patient department, and a very meek sort of experiment for a St. Bernard’s man. Dr. Stanforth told his class a good thing from Milan, where a tremendous experiment, involving risk to the lives of several “This is the heroic work we need so much in England. They are not nearly so timid in other countries as we are. We must have a policy of ‘thorough,’ or we shall be left behind.” And he set his lips firmly, and looked as though henceforth his patients were going to have “a bad time.” Mr. Mole was doing all his little best to bring about this scientific millennium, but just then was not able to produce the results of his work, as the time was not ripe for his revelations. |