I pity the unfortunate who, in their necessities, find only the succour of the civil authorities, without the intervention of Christian charity. In reports presented to the public, philanthropy may and will exaggerate the care which it lavishes on the unfortunate, but things will not be so in reality.—Balmez.

He loves not to be prodigal of men’s lives, but thriftily improves the objects of his cruelty, spending them by degrees, and epicurizing on their pain.—Thos. Fuller.

The institution and maintenance of such public charities as hospitals for the gratuitous relief of sickness all over Europe are directly due to Christianity; no other religion or policy, except Buddhism in its prime, ever blessed the world with such a form of charity. It has become a recognised idea in our day that a poor sick man has a right to be restored to health at the hands of a Christian people. That there are misuses of it is well known, many persons seeking to participate in this benevolence who could afford to obtain medical aid at their own expense; yet the public is so convinced that at any cost it is bound to remove the burden of illness from the shoulders of the poor, that it is ready to wink at the abuse of its kindness in this way. The physicians and surgeons attached to the greater hospitals are much sought after by very well-to-do, not to say opulent, persons, who use every mean device to obtain consultations gratuitously. Many such persons have been known to attire themselves in the clothes of their servants, and to send their children in charge of their cooks, to obtain advice and medicine which would have entailed expense if obtained privately. This is one of the ways in which such institutions are robbed.

It is possible that the treatment of the ills to which humanity is subject may in course of time be considerably improved, in consequence of the patient investigation that has long been carried out on every form of disease at our hospitals. At present physiology and pathology so entirely occupy the attention of the doctors, that treatment is relegated to the distant future. A French physician spoke the truth when he said, “The object of the scientific practitioner is to make a good diagnosis in life, and then verify it on the post-mortem table.” It is not to be denied that the art of making a good diagnosis has been brought to considerable perfection of late; but whether we are more successful than the doctors of former times in curing these well-diagnosed diseases is very doubtful. Now a general hospital, frequented by thousands of “cases,” is to the inquiring physician what an Alpine valley is to the botanist, or a Brazilian forest to an entomologist. It is there that orders, genera, and species are to be found. Diseases for classification in all their variations are met with amongst the crowds applying for treatment. The great object is to get the crowds; they come for one thing, the doctors for another. Very good and kind and clever at curing folk, no doubt they often are, but primarily the object of calling the crowd together is precisely that which the herbarium supplies to the botanist, and the nest of drawers to the entomologist.

The hospital professor is like LinnÆus, who so curiously expressed himself when he had achieved success:—

“God hath so led me, that what I desired and could not attain has been my greatest blessing;

“God hath given me interesting and honourable service, yea! that which in all the world I most desired;

“He hath lifted me up among the mÆcenates scientiarum, yea! among the princes of the kingdom, and into the King’s house;

“He hath lent me the largest herbarium in the world, my best delight.

“He hath honoured me with the honorary title of arkiater, with the star of a knight, with the shield of a nobleman, and with a name in the world of letters, etc.”

The only difference being that the great botanist thanked God for his herbarium, while our hospital man of science has generally little thought of God when making up his case book, unless it be to think, with Helmholtz, how much more perfect organs he could have devised had he been consulted at creation.

Elsworth often thought that all their diagnosis and classification did little for the cure of disease; and that, as the labourer said of his landlord’s claret, “You didn’t get any forrarder with it all!”

“Some day we shall arrive at the treatment stage,” they said; “at present all is chaos in that direction. We have not diagnosed enough,” they urge. “We must diagnose a good deal more in every part of the world; then meet in congress, then keep up discussion in a hundred societies, and, in the course of a century or so, we may begin to try to cure people; but it is too early yet. Meanwhile, we can diagnose. And take our fees? Why, certainly!”

Mr. Crowe was lecturer on physiology and pathology; that is to say, he taught the students what the human body is in its normal state, and what happened to it when subject to disease. He claimed that the only gate to the true knowledge of a doctor’s work was the branch of science which formed his speciality; and, as the examiners seemed to take the same view, Mr. Crowe occupied a considerable share of the students’ time and attention. St. Bernard’s made a great fuss with Mr. Crowe, and grudged no expenditure on his department. He could have all sorts of costly and curious apparatus on application, because, in the present rage for experiment, it was found to pay. He had a beautiful laboratory for his work in the medical school, and in the hospital, fine new chambers attached to the post-mortem room, where he kept his microscopes, and made sections with the utmost patience and skill. Here he often spent whole nights alone; here it was more than rumoured the most gruesome things went on in secret, for, in the vaults below, there was a small menagerie. No one was supposed to have access to this inquisition-chamber, except he was either in Mr. Crowe’s employ, or in his completest confidence, for of late unpleasant discussions had taken place, and the subscribing public had made it pretty well known that they did not support St. Bernard’s for this sort of work. Thus, great care had to be exercised, and all Mr. Crowe’s familiars were cautioned to mind what they were about. The tabbies and the lap-dogs of the neighbourhood could venture abroad with less danger of being pressed for service at St. Bernard’s, and the porters had to go to Seven Dials for their purchases. These porters were characters in their way. Long service in this line of business had left its marks upon them. They were scarred and furrowed about the hands and arms with bites, cuts, and scratches, which had healed badly, and, to the skilled observer, sufficiently stamped them with the trade mark of the hospital. They were brutalized by their ghoul-like work, and, if given the opportunity of doing a stroke of business, would stick at nothing in the way of subjects, which did not actually jeopardize their necks.

Mr. Crowe was forty-two years old, of middle height, dark, and inclined to leanness. He had a decidedly malevolent aspect. His face was not that of the libertine, the schemer, or the man of pleasure; but a perfect pitilessness, an utter dissociation from any genial or loving characteristics, was boldly recorded on the lines of his face, and the very carriage of his body. Hard was not the word for it, cruel was not wide enough to comprehend his character. Disregard of all pain in others, contempt for those who professed to care for what troubled others; these were the distinguishing traits of Mr. Malthus Crowe’s moral character, and his face advertised it. Mr Crowe was rapidly becoming an authority in his branches of science, and accordingly brought much kudos to St. Bernard’s. Had not physiology been invented in these latter days, it is difficult to imagine what the world could have done for Mr. Crowe. He loved pain; he reverenced and esteemed it (in others, of course). He had inflicted it in every form, and watched its effects learnedly without flinching, both in animals and man. He always described it as a tonic—Nature’s great nerve bracer—but he never took it himself if he could help it. He declared the world could not get on without it.

He had married in early life the daughter of an Italian engineer, who lived at Cernobbio, on Lake Como. Having been in the habit of taking his long vacation tour in Switzerland and Italy, he had formed the acquaintance of several hospital surgeons of kindred tastes to his own, and had frequently visited them at Milan and Genoa, and compared notes on matters of mutual interest. One of these confrÈres had introduced him to his family, and so he met Olympia Casatelli, and, having some reason to think her prospects good, had married her, notwithstanding she was a Catholic, though her pronounced Garibaldian sentiments had left her without any very ardent attachment to the religion of her baptism.

Olympia was deeply imbued with the new Italian patriotism, and cordially detested the “rule of the monk.” Passionate in her love for her country, she eagerly caught at Mr. Crowe’s atheistic and revolutionary notions, and, repellent as he appeared to most women, he succeeded in winning her love, more by his professed sympathy with the cause of Italian independence, and his hatred of the Bourbon and Austrian, than by his own personal attractions. Downright ugliness in a clever man is often an additional attraction, even to a handsome woman; and Mr. Crowe’s science and revolutionary sympathies found their way to Olympia’s heart, during an autumn holiday he passed at the lakes. She must have loved him very much, or thought she did, or she could never have torn herself away from the beloved mountains and the blissful lake to bury herself in a wilderness of brick in the heart of London. However, she had not been married a year ere she began to pine for her picturesque home by the waterfall in the midst of the vineyard at Cernobbio.

She soon found that her husband’s interest in Italy was merely that of a destroyer—he cared only to upset the old order of things everywhere, loved anarchy for the sake of pulling down something venerated by Christian folk, and was insusceptible of sympathy with patriotism. Soon poor Olympia was disillusioned; her husband was absorbed so completely in his unpleasant branch of science, that she had little of his company, and gradually was entirely neglected. She had few friends in London, and none of the resources that would have helped an Englishwoman similarly situated. It was not long before Mr. Crowe threw off his mask. He cared for her less even than he cared for her country: it was plain that he had married for money, and had not realized his expectations. Working as he was doing for European fame, engaged in researches which could only indirectly bring him reward, it was irksome in the extreme for him to have to devote valuable time to patients and pupils, for the sake of earning a living. He had trusted to a good marriage to liberate him from these necessities. Never a very ardent lover, he showed disgust when his neglected wife sought a miserable refuge from her grief in narcotics. She gradually neglected her personal appearance, and declined her food, occupying herself with painting and music, but not sufficiently to absorb herself in these pursuits; she slowly wasted, and ultimately lost her health completely. Then her sleep forsook her, and she took chloral by her husband’s suggestion. Its fascination held her in a bondage, from which she had no sufficient energy to escape, and in mind and body the beautiful Olympia, so recently the flower of her mountain home, became a wreck, Her very presence soon became an annoyance to her husband, and for days together he would absent himself from the house. She was so irksome to him, that had he any deity in his pantheon who could have assisted him, he would have prayed for her death. The sole deity he acknowledged was the one who only helps those who help themselves; and at times a dark thought occurred to him that some day he should be compelled to come to his own assistance—the methods of carrying out such an idea were all too easy and too safe for a man with his knowledge and in his position.