Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A great day for the doctors / [Charles Dickens]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![Charles Dickens.] THE GHOST THAT APPEAEEH TO MES. WHAETON. Tance—often with poverty and hope deferred .—and tlien the final gradual triumph of patient desert, and its reward, in distinction, wealth, and the daily opportunities of lessening human pain and saving valuable lives. This happy climax charms all hearers. Each young listener makes the case his own, and, as his high-lows trample down the staircase when the lecture is over, he is thinking of the day when he is to step out of the hall of a sick duchess into a yellow chariot, to be driven round to a host of equally distinguished patients. At times, but not so often as they might be, ! these opening medical addresses are enlivened .by anecdotic morsels of human experience. One London lecturer v/ho so enlivened his instructions, used to gain the hearts of his young hearers wholesale, especially when he en- couraged them by telling how he, now the great hospital light, made blunders to begin with. One day he was describing his first attend- ance on a grand operation, at which a senior surgeon seeing him stand by, said, ‘‘ Mr. see if you can feel the artery.” “ I put my , digit into the wound,” confessed the future great operator, “ and so probed it, but the examination gave me about as much informa- tion as if I had put my finger into the Atlantic to discover America.” But this great day for the doctors in all places at the present time presents a great contrast to things as they were, even in the memory of those who are now active and busy at such meetings ; and as the change illustrates the age we live in, it may well be noticed. Every living being—every man, woman, and child — endures a certain ascertained amount of sickness during life, for the allevia- tion of which, medical knowledge and skill is required. But medical efficiency in the treat- ment of disease cannot be gained unless the young doctor bases all his subsequent studies upon a thorough knowledge of the structure of the human body. This information can only be had by the use of the scalpel upon the dead. The very notion is apt to send a thrill through every nerve of those unaccustomed to regard the subject in a philosophical light. But the terms are absolute: no dissection— no knowledge. For generations, such means of information were forbidden to the student; and being denied by law, and abhorrent to popular feeling, the unlucky doctors had to run all sorts of risks, and to resort to all kinds of improper and disagreeable expe- dients to procure the means of teaching the art of the anatomist. Hence sprung up a race of “resurrection men,” as they were called,—men who stole the bodies of the dead, to sell them to anatomical schools for dissec- tion. Their robberies of the grave were carried on at great risks. The public de- testation of the crime was so great, that when a clumsy or unlucky follower of it was detected, he had to fight for his life, or sub- 139 mit to be kicked and beaten, and trampled to death. But the first of October is no longer preceded by the forays of the “ resurrectionist; ” no longer clouded by the lack of means for pur- suing the branch of study on which the superstructure of medical knowledge must be raised. A population of two millions has ever some members dropping from the ranks solitary and unknown—the waifs and strays of society—without friends to know or to mourn their fate. Almost always paupers, often criminals, though their lives may have been useless, or worse, they seem to make, when the fitful struggle is over, some atonement after death. The wreck of their former selves is offered at the shrine of science for a while, and when thereafter they are gathered to the kindred dust of the graveyard, they may sleep none the less calmly for having contributed no mean help to the advancement of that branch of human knowledge which has its annual ovation on the first of October—the great day for the doctors. THE GHOST THAT APPEAEED TO MES. WHAETON. When my mother was a girl, some rumours began to steal through the town where she lived, about something having gone amiss with old Mrs. Wharton : for, if Mrs. Wharton was not knov/n by all the townspeople, she was known and respected by so many, that it was really no trifle when she was seen to have the contracted brow, and the pinched look about the nose that people have when they are in alarm, or living a life of deep anxiety. Nobody could make out what was the matter. If asked, she said she was well. Her sons were understood to be perfectly respectable, and sufficiently prosperous ; and there could be no doubt about the health, and the dutifulness, and the cheerfulness, of the unmarried daughter who lived with her. The old lady lived in a house which was her own property ; and her income, though not large, was enough for comfort. Wliat could it be that made her suddenly so silent and grave ? Her daughter was just the same as ever, except that she was anxious about the change in her mother. It vfas observed by one or two that the clergy- man had nothing to say, when the subject was spoken of in his hearing. He rolled and nodded his head, and he glanced at the ceiling, and then stuck his chin deep into his shirt- frill ; but those were things that he was always doing, and they might mean nothing. When inquired of about his opinion of Mrs. Wliarton’s looks and spirits, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as he stood before the fire with his hands behind him, and said, with the sweet voice and winning manner that charmed young and old, that, as far as he knew, Mrs. Wharton’s external affairs were all right; and, as for peace of mind, he knew of no one who more deserved](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22466009_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
