Part 2 (1/2)
Another thing for which I have edand study of natural objects We were taught that the only excuse thatof animal life honourable was for some useful purpose, like food or study or self-preservation Several cases of birds stuffed and set up ere fourteen and sixteen years of age still adorn the old house Every bit had to be done by ourselves,the cases, and I the rock work and taxiderlue-soaked brown paper that wemesses, and only the patience of the old-time domestics would have ”stood for it” My brother specialized in birds' eggs, and I in butterflies and moths Later we added seaweeds, shells, and flowers Soh we have not a really scientific acquaintance with either of these kingdoms, we acquired a ”hail-felloell-met” familiarity with all of them, which has enlivened many a day in h life Moreover, though purchased pictures have other values, the old cases set on the walls of one's den bring back memories that are the joy and solace of , each extra butterfly picturing sootten Here, for instance, is a convolvulus hawk father found killed on a ht in the Pyrenees; here a ”red burnet” with ”five eyes”
captured as we raced through the bracken on Clifton Downs; and there are ”purple emperors” wired down to ”ht at school have I stolen into the great forest, my butterfly net under my coat, to try and add a new speciood ”key-books,” so that we should be able to identify our speciently One value ofout in the night, and the thrills of out of doors in the beautiful su”
in the house or had gone to bed, used actually to aring of the tree ste potions, and the subsequent excite for specih the caterpillar stage, taught us
One of our holidays was memorable, because as soon as our parents left we invited my friend and two sisters as well to co that h sports to stay when they found it was only us two boys They greatly added to the enjoyment of the days, and if they had not been such inveterate home letter-writers--a habit of which ere very conteood-hu afterwards, for the matron would have been mum and no one the wiser
CHAPTER III
EARLY WORK IN LONDON
In 1883boys and to confine hiy to London where he had been offered the chaplaincy of the huge London Hospital I re if I had any idea what I wanted to do in life It came to me as a new conundrum It had never occurred to me to look forward to a profession; except that I knew that the heads of tigers, deer, and all sorts of trophies of the chase which adorned our house came from soldier uncles and others who hunted theht that their occupation would suit my taste admirably It never dawned on me that I would have to earnMoreover, I had never seen real poverty in others, for all the fisher-folk in our village seeh I hated dress and frills, and envied no one At school, and on the Riviera, and even in Wales, I had never noticed any want It is true that a nue caet soup They used to sit in the back hall, each with a round tin can with a bucket handle These were filled with hot broth, and the old ladies were given a repast as well before leaving As a matter of fact I very seldom actually saw thee double green-baize covered doors But I often knew that they h fed to overflowing, usually attended these seances, and I presume, while the old ladies were occupied with lunch, sa the floor He used to co whiskers which betrayed his excursion, and the look of a connoisseur in his large round eyes--as if he were certifying that justice had been done once more in the kitchen
While I was in France the h Marseilles on her way home from India, and had non, and other historical places She was the wife of a faes fluently, including Arabic, and was a perfect ”vadeinformation which she well kne to impart She had known lo-Indians in the army service
About the ti in Chester with her brother-in-law, the Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshi+re It was decided that as she was a citizeness of the world, no one could suggest better for what profession o forgotten, but I recall co would not support h it had no attraction for ainst it
None of our family on either side, so far as I can find out, had ever practised medicine My own experience of doctors had been rather a chequered one, but at ladly went up and discussed the matter with our country family doctor He was a fine man, and we boys were very fond of hiirl friend near by He had an enormous practice, in which he was eminently successful The number of horses he kept, and the miles he covered with them, were phenomenal in ave us boys away, though he must have known many of our pranks played in our parents' absence
The only reht down froe jar, out of which he produced a pickled human brain I was thrilled with entirely new eht of man's body as a machine That this weird, white, puckered-up mass could be the producer or transmitter of all that rowth, and our responses to life, that it made one into ”Mad G” and another into me--why, it was absolutely ramophone, the camera, the automobile
My father saw at once on my return that I had found my real interest, and put before o to Oxford, where my brother had just entered, or to join him in London and take up work in the London Hospital and University, preparatory to going in for medicine I chose the latter at once--a decision I have never regretted I ought to say that business as a career was not suggested
In England, especially in those days, these things were hters or educators, except for an occasional statese in this plan
The school had been leased for a period of seven years to a very delightful successor, it being rightly supposed that after that time my brother would wish to assume the responsibility
Some of the subjects for the London lish” But with the fresh incentive and new vision of responsibility I set to ith a will, and soon had mastered the ten required subjects sufficiently to pass the examination with credit But I lish public school teaching of that period were none too stringent
I ith all my heart that others had spoken out as bravely, for in those days that wonderful man was held up to our scorn as an atheist and iconoclast He was, however, perfectly right We spent years of life and heaps ofto fit us for life, except that which we picked up incidentally
I now followed my father to London, and found every subject except my chemistry entirely neas not fay, or comparative anatomy About the universe which I inhabited I knew as little as I did about cuneifors Except foron which to basefroreat advantage over men of my previous education; I did not even kno to study wisely Again, as Huxley showed,no teaching university, that the curriculu foisted upon the world far too many medical men of the type of Bob Sawyer
There were fourteen hospitals in London to which est in the British Isles, and in thelocated in the famous Whitechapel Road, and surrounded by all the purlieus of the East End of the great city Patients caate Market, and all the river haunts between; fro, Poplar, frohway, made famous by crime and by Charles dickens They came from Bethnal Green, where once queens had their courts, now the squalid and crowded home of poverty; from Stratford and Bow, and a hundred other slums
The hospital had some nine hundred beds, which were always so full that the last surgeon ad to his wards constantly found hiulation nuh sheer necessity It afforded an unrivalled field for clinical experience and practical teaching Into its position in London, and the fact that its school was only just e from primeval chaos, it attracted very few indeed of the ed to come to London for their last two or three years' hospital work--the scope in those s back I arateful to my alma mater, and have that real affection for her that every loyal son should have But even that does not conceal fro establishes of previous scientific training, ere sons of medical men, or had served apprenticeshi+ps to theh its utter inefficiency But men in my position suffered quite unconsciously a terrible handicap, and it was only the influences for which I had nothing whatever to thank the hospital that saved me from the catastrophes which overtook so in with, there was no supervision of our lives whatever We were flung into a coarse and evil environ men who too often took pride in their shame, just to sink or swim Not one soul cared which you did I can still remember nue su the sons they loved direct to the devil I recall one lad whom I had known at school His father lavishedhie practice, and bring to it all the many new advances he had learned The reports of examinations successfully passed he fully accepted; and the non-return of his son at vacation times he put down to professional zeal It was not till the tiree and return that the father discovered that he had lived exactly the life of the prodigal in the parable, and had neither attended college nor attele examination of any kind whatever It broke the father's heart and he died
Exarees were held by the London University, or the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, never by the hospital schools These were practically race co, but when you had done certain things, they allowed you to coh a written and ”viva voce”
exa public ”qualified to kill”--often only too literally so
It is obvious on the face of it that this could be no proper criterion for so important a decision as to qualifications; special crammers studied the exareat deal to do with success While some men never did themselves justice in examinations, others were exactly the reverse