MEDICAL STUDIES 29 



the lotions, but are particularly pleasant to munch, and 

 I ate them in abundance when the humour seized me. 

 In later years I found poppy seeds in common use 

 somewhere in Germany, for making a particular 

 pudding ; I think it was in Bonn. 



The duties gradually imposed on me were to go 

 with the surgeons on their morning rounds, always 

 to attend in the accident room, where persons suffer- 

 ing from accidents were received whether in the night 

 or day, and to help in dressing them, also to be 

 present at all operations, and to take part at every 

 post-mortem examination, of which there were per- 

 haps two or three weekly. The times of which I 

 am speaking were long before those of chloroform, 

 and many long years before that of Pasteur and Sir 

 Joseph Lister. The stethoscope was considered 

 generally to be new-fangled ; the older and naturally 

 somewhat deaf practitioners pooh-poohed and never 

 used it. 



I cannot understand to this day why youths selected 

 for their powers of sharp hearing should not be so far 

 instructed as to be used by physicians, much as 

 pointers and setters are used by sportsmen. They 

 could be taught what to listen for, probably by means 

 of some sound-emitting instruments more or less 

 muffled, and how to describe what they heard. A 

 patient during the incipient stage of his disease might 

 be submitted to examination by one or more of these 

 quick-hearing youths, who would report to the doctor, 

 who thereupon would form and express his opinion. 

 Similarly as regards touch, of which great delicacy is 

 of the highest importance. Conceive what help might 

 be given by them in discovering deeply seated tumours, 



