MEDICAL EXPERIENCES 17 



taken to the hospital to have another piece 

 of bone removed. On his being brought into 

 the theatre for the second operation, the child, 

 with a vivid remembrance of the first one, 

 appealed to the surgeon to postpone it. " Not 

 to-da} T , Mister Lister ! " he cried, "do it to- 

 morrow, not to-day." The futility of the boy's 

 plea struck the assembled students as so comical 

 that they broke out into peals of laughter. I, 

 having seen some of the clamps, vices, screws 

 and other appliances and instruments used in 

 the pre-chloroform days for binding the patients 

 or fixing their limbs, must confess my sympathies 

 went rather with the little lad than with the 

 hilarious medicals, of whom mv father-in-law 

 was one. 



Tegetmeier's first and last practical experience 

 of doctoring was the work he undertook as 

 assistant to a medical man practising at Brackley, 

 a small town in Northampton, close to the 

 Buckinghamshire border. He was not then nor 

 ever became a fully qualified medical man ; but 

 the law governing the practice of medicine was 

 much less strict than it has since become, and 

 the lack of full qualifications proved no obstacle 

 to his obtaining the post. A letter from his 

 employer, a Mr. Frederick Gee, clears this point, 

 and is so characteristic (of both parties and 

 of the times) that I give an extract or two 

 from it. 



o 



