Saint George and the dragon / Charles Dickens.

  • Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Date:
[1852]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Saint George and the dragon / 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.

    1/4 (page 77)
    ri w lurlet Dirkem/ larrivi SAIKX GEOKCVK AND THE DRAGON. + ' [mother-country *hr)ijl W ofTu-r / isom-ihe mothferiUjbooks and trays ; and the noisy vestibule is at to /»lonco deserted. Let us follow the last batch ’up the stairs. This is a physician’s ward. At this houi all the patients are in betl to await their doctor’* visit. The cluster of student* follow the physician, and settle for a few minutes here and there upon particular l*-ds, as they proceed down tne long vista of sufferer*. The |*ntients are quiet enough whilst the physicians are present; but we will just look in half nn-honr hence and see what a change there will be. At the end of each ward is a room for the nurse. See how she has contrived to make it look like home ; the bit of carpet, the canary, the pictures r<>und the walls, all express an individuality strongly in contrast with tho bare monotonous asjiect of the open ward. Meanwhile the swarm of black f>ocs is pitching upon a distant l>ed ; before we can reach it, however, a little Ik-11 rings, and all tho patients* eyes turn to- wards a particular part of the wall. There we see a large dial, like that of a barometer, with a hand in the centre. Round it are the names of the medical officers, nurses, and the words accident, operation, chapel, &c. There is one of these dials in every ward, and all are worked by a series of iron roils which communicate with each other, the impulse being given by the porter below in the hall. By this means anything that is going on in the Hospital is known simultaneously at every part of it. The bell that has just rung is part of the apparatus, and draws attention to the movements of tho hand. It stops at “operation ;’* and in a minute afterwards a long line of students are seen winding up the stairs, the surgeon at their head. He looks calm ; hut depend “ High Change” at the Hospital. Dotted upon it, he bears an anxious mind, for lift* out, nmoDg the living mass, are some who and reputation wait upon his skill. Let ns tv little wooden trays filled with lint and follow the crowd; a new spirit has come rgieal instruments. These are “ dressers,” . over the students ;—the jolliest and most liting for the surgeons to make their daily . careless walk up steadily and silently. It is und of the wards. Others have long to be a tremendous operation—on<* of the ecn books tucked under their arms : these , great arteries, deep down in the pelvis, has to e the clerks of the physicians, whose duty be tied, and no one kuows how it tuay is to post up, day by day, the progress terminate, bf the patients, until “dead” or “recovered” Steadily and quietly tho Ojierating Theatre |loses the account. They are all looking into 1 is overflowed from the top benches, and the Board-room, and expecting the advent spectator looks down upon a hollow cone of [of the big Medicine-men. The younger men human heads. The focus of this living mass jard this room with awe ; for, to them, it is is the operating table, on which, covered with Kealed book ; and they wonder if the time a sheet, lies the anxious patient; and every brill ever come when they will lounge care-! now and then he sweeps with an anxious le&dy in and out of it, or have their portraits glance the sea of heads which surrounds him. ■ttng upon the walls, or their busts placed . Close to him is the surgeon ; his white cuffs Spon brackets. j lightly turned up, examining carelessly a • Now, the Board-room door opens : a surgeon gleaming knife, and talking in whispers to bines out, wheels to the right, strides down his colleagues and assistants. tho passage, and off goes one of the trays and Slowly the bewildered countenance of the ♦ broil of students. A physician follows, and patient relaxes,—his eyes close,—he breathes tin- ns to the left: with him flies a green book peacefully,—he sleeps, under the }*»neficent tod another ring of satellites. Surgeons and influence of chloroform, like a two-years’ physicians follow, oue after another, each old child. The sheet is removed, and there taking up his little crowd of followers, green lies a motionless, helpless, nerve-numbed life ; [saint GEORGl^_^ At the most activK^on$d{ most jtive lane of the great nffttrftjvfffoT stands a large building of the |»seudo-cla.s*ical style. Its vast monotonous white think, exp m<I to the full roar of Piccadilly, gives no sign of or animation ; and if it were not for the iscription on its frieze, “supported by volun- iry contributions,” it might be taken for a rorkhouse, or for one of Kush’s palaces. Will the reader be conducted through tho laby- Lltbs of Saint George’s Hospital, and see me thing of the eternal fight that every day iholds between tho good Saint George and Itlir undying 1 hragon ox I liaea But let him not enter with the idea that [there is anything repulsive in the contempla- tion of this congregation of human sufferers ; abut rather with a sense of the beneficence of |an institution, which snatches poor helpless features from the depressing influences of boisome alleys, or the fever-jungles of pesti- lential courts, and opens to them here—in the ie air, where a palace might be proud to mt itself—a home, with benevolence and barity as their friends and servitors. Neither pust he look with a half-averted glance upon scenes we have to show him ; for their uni is to render the anguish of one sufferer kubservient to the future ease of some suc- ieding sufferer; to make great Death himself flay tribute to the living. As we enter and proceed into the fine ves- tibule, a crowd of students are seen hanging the Board-room door. It is one o’clock,