St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student

Having selected medicine as a profession, the usual day for a man to enter on a course of study at one of our great medical schools is the first of October. The almanack tells u...

Elsworth entered the profession of medicine with a large stock of a commodity just now rather out of fashion with our young men. This limp and degenerate age seems unable to sup...

Throw physic to the dogs! A pipe—cheroot— Pilot—and life-preserver—_voila tout!_ A little lecture now and then to boot, A school or hospital to bustle thro’, A few hard terms—on...

Knowledge after all, is not the greatest thing in life; it is not the “be-all and the end-all” here. Life is not science. The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than...

Old Jeremiah Horne was the beadle of the medical school at St. Bernard’s. He had held the post now for nearly thirty years, and his father held it before him. He and his family...

Firmly screwed upon the door Doth the lion-knocker frown. To-night its reign of noise is o’er; Courage, boys, we’ll have it down! Long its strength defied Every dodge we tried;...

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...

Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered _although_ they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered _be...

Early the following morning, Elsworth presented himself to young Dr. Wilson, the house surgeon in charge of the wards under the chief care of the surgeons, to whom he was appoin...

Dr. Day had introduced Elsworth to a rather singular society, founded by himself and daughter, in the West End of town, and much frequented by medical, literary, musical, and ar...

It was Elsworth’s third year at the hospital. He had taken several gold medals and scholarships; and so, to outward appearance, had done well. But he was not as he was when he e...

Such men, in other men’s calamities, are, as it were, in season, and are ever on the loading part; not so good as the dogs that licked Lazarus’ sores, but like flies that are st...

It would be very far from the truth to say that when people cast off their orthodox creeds they turn their morals out of doors. Some of the noblest and most beautiful souls main...

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 recordin...

Nothing in his curriculum puzzled our embryo physician so much as the different methods of treatment advocated by his teachers. With many of them, it is only fair to say, the on...

The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.—_Lacon._

It was the 9th of November, and Lord Mayor’s Show day—a festival of the first class at all the medical schools of the metropolis. On great occasions like this, the spirits of al...

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 publ...

I hold that we should only affect compassion, and carefully avoid having any; it is a passion that is perfectly useless in a well-constituted mind, serving but to weaken the hea...

Doctrines and maxims, good or bad, flow abroad from a public teacher as from a fountain, and his faulty lessons may become the indirect source of incalculable mischief and suffe...

Although hospitals have been intended as a blessing and benefit to the poor, they have too often proved the reverse, on account of the ignorance on the part of their administrat...

Oh, then, if Reason waver at thy side, Let humbler Memory be thy gentle guide; Go to thy birthplace, and, if Faith was there, Repeat thy father’s creed, thy mother’s prayer. —_O...

And Wisdom’s self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where with her best nurse Contemplation, She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings, That in the various bustle of re...

The Divine origin of Christianity is manifested in nothing more powerfully than by the progress it rapidly made among the Latin races. Tho soft, voluptuous climates of Southern...

Two years had passed away since Elsworth’s disappearance, and a little party of house physicians and surgeons—all young men and recently qualified—were sitting round the roaring...

The world’s male chivalry has perished out, But women are knights-errant to the last; And if Cervantes had been Shakespeare too, He had made his Don a Donna. —_Elizabeth B. Brow...

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 li...

Dr. Stanforth knew everybody, from “a very exalted personage,” with whom he led the students to believe he was on terms of close intimacy, down to the most insignificant discipl...

He hansels not his new experiments on the bodies of his patients, letting loose mad receipts into the sick man’s body, to try how well nature in him will fight against them, whi...

The prince who asked, “Who is she?” when anything went wrong in his kingdom, was not far out in his estimate of the power of woman for mischief; but he would have been wiser had...

If to the city sped—what waits him there? To see profusion that he must not share; To see ten thousand baneful arts combined, To pamper luxury and thin mankind. _Goldsmith_ (“_D...

And so the medical staff of the Nightingale Hospital of fifty beds consisted of a resident doctor, duly qualified both by nature and the colleges—the only true “double qualifica...

In nothing have hospitals improved more of late years than in their nursing arrangements. This seems coincident with the High Church movement which has given the sick poor the i...

“You are sick, that’s sure”—they say; “Sick of what?”—they disagree. “’Tis the brain”—thinks Doctor A; “’Tis the heart”—holds Doctor B; “The liver—my life I’d lay!” “The lungs!”...

Let me be sick myself if sometimes the malady of my patient be not a disease to me. I desire rather to cure his infirmities than my own necessities.—_Sir Thomas Browne._

One lovely autumn evening, just five years after Elsworth went to Spain, two Englishmen were chatting over their wine in the dining-room of the Hotel de los Siete Suelos in the...

Grief should be Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles; to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, th...

The romance of the novelist and the startling incident of melodrama are colourless and insignificant in comparison with the events of real life. Every day things happen around u...

“This is not our work,” you say, “this is the work of men.” Be it so if you like. Let them be the hands to do it: but who, if not women, are to be the hearts of the redemption o...

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...

Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover a natural propension to cruelty. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to spectacles of the slaughter of animals...

Elsworth had lived all this time hitherto in Spain without falling in love;—quite a phenomenal attitude for a healthy young fellow in a land like this, where the women’s eyes, t...

Dr. Sones had pursued his investigations till he had made the great discovery of a test for the active principle of the poisonous fungi. He clearly demonstrated that the poison...

Pass on, young stream, the world has need of thee; Far hence a mighty river on its breast Bears the deep-laden vessels to the sea; Far hence wide waters feed the vines and corn....