Life Unveiled, by a Child of the Drumlins — Chapter 9 Part I - The Medic-Continued

THE “MEDIC”--_Continued_ Our Caddie’s greeting was a pleasant surprise when we went back to College that second year.

Stopping me and beaming on me, she congratulated me warmly on my anatomy paper: “Frankly, Miss Arnold, I was astonished when I learned it was your paper.

You seldom did yourself justice in quizzes, it seems.

” Even to this graciousness I was so constrained I could only blush and look pleased; but some years later when she visited in the city where I was practising, and I was driving out with her and another woman physician, I confessed my former fear.

How she laughed and melted!

Then, turning suddenly, she asked in her old manner, “Did you think I would eat you?

” For an instant I almost trembled, as in the old days, but her merry smile soon followed.

Since then the utmost cordiality has existed between us.

The second year in College was the busiest.

We had more studies, more instructors, and a more varied life in every way.

They lectured us on disease-conditions and on the remedies to be applied.

There were the various clinics in the dispensary department--throat clinics, chest clinics, women’s clinics, surgical clinics, children’s clinics, and so on, where, under the various instructors, we were required to examine and diagnose cases and to watch the result of treatment.

Patients too ill to come to the clinics were visited in their homes by the senior students, and by the “middlers” after the first half of their second year.

Before taking cases, however, we went with the seniors on their visits to get a little familiar with the work.

Once on going with a senior to an obstetric case, we found the baby already born, and the cord tied and cut!

A half-witted sister of the patient met us at the door; the woman lay on the bed with no sheets on it; the new baby, naked and cold, was crying vigorously; and, playing on the bed beside the mother, was a little five-year-old who had been there through the labour.

It seems when the baby came and the patient had told her sister to cut the cord, the sister refusing, the woman had sat up in bed and cut it herself!

What a mass of instruction was thrust upon us that second year!

I

enjoyed most the lectures of our professor in _materia medica_.

A

charming man, enthusiastic, fluent, apt at illustration--a more ready and engaging speaker I have never heard.

Taking all he said as gospel-truth, I was not a little disturbed toward the close of that year to hear the seniors insinuate that he never spoiled a story for the truth’s sake; that he would tell of some wonderful case one year, ascribing the favourable termination to a certain remedy, and the next year would forget and tell of it under quite another remedy!

Each disclosure of this kind came as a shock; it was so difficult--it is, even now--to believe that people are not what they seem.

One man, our professor in pathology, never swerved one jot or tittle from the truth.

This trait was so strong that he seemed always to be telling us what _not_ to believe; he was for ever exposing shams and false theories, dubbing them “all fol-de-rol.

” He gave us clear, concise pictures of diseases; told what measures to adopt to relieve them; what remedies to rely on, so far as remedies could be of service; but never failed to impress upon us that “the books lie, and doctors lie,” if they claim that cases follow the typical courses so beautifully pictured; or that remedies, however well selected, will invariably relieve.

There was a touch of peevishness in his attempts to make us chary about believing the stock statements in the books.

I had a great liking for him; his earnestness appealed to me.

Abrupt and brusque as he was, on the rare occasions when he smiled, his smile had that distinctive charm that an infrequent smile always lends to a stern, serious face.

He was an excellent offset to the optimism and enthusiasm of our professor in _materia medica_.

(A few years ago he came on as guest of honour and read a paper at our State Medical Society meeting in Brooklyn.

He looked much older, his hair was thinned and white, but his voice had the old scornful ring, and carried me back to those student days in Boston; every familiar inflection was a fresh delight; and to make it more realistic, there was dear Dr. Wilkins who had come on, too--the Miss Wilkins who had so mothered me in college--past and present were strangely blended that day: on the platform Dr. “Conrad,” whose tones made me a student again; by my side the class-mate who had sat with me in the old days and listened to those same tones; while all around me were also friends and associates of to-day, else I surely should have felt myself a girl again and back in the old lecture room.

) Our professor in throat diseases was no favourite with the students.

He had a smooth face, china-blue eyes, and wore a brown wig.

We thought him vain, and knew he was irritable; and we failed to get much out of his lectures or clinics.

Once I asked him to go with me in consultation to a home where I suspected my case was diphtheria; he went and, confirming my diagnosis with alacrity, hurried out of the house, showing such personal apprehension that it made me feel a bit contemptuous.

He asked me if I were not afraid of it, and advised me, wisely, to send the case at once to the city hospital, which I did.

The same professor whom we had had the first year in the History of Medicine, instructed us in diseases of the chest; friendly and approachable, he gave us good lectures and valuable clinics.

The Dean, bless his heart!

lectured to us on surgery.

He always seemed in a hurry; he was an easy talker.

Some of the students were inclined to belittle his skill as an operator, though admitting that he had been an excellent surgeon in his palmier days.

Anyhow, he had force and charm, and was an indefatigable worker, and a warm-hearted, tactful man.

In obstetrics we had an able man, friendly, alert, conscientious, and a good instructor.

The professor in diseases of women was a pretty, fascinating woman, a general favourite; she had a big practice over on the Back Bay.

We students thought her charmingly inefficient as a lecturer; it was a pleasure to look at her, and to listen to her, but her lectures were thin, and her clinics disappointing.

I could so seldom find what she would tell us we ought to find in the cases, and when I would say I couldn’t, she would smile in her bewitching way and say, “Oh, but you _must_, it is there”; and then I would try again, often unsuccessfully, while she seemed to have little aptitude to make me find the thing in question.

Somehow, we got in the way of not taking her very seriously;

but, come to think of it, it is hardly fair to single her out as the cause of my stupidity, for there were clinics of the other professors as well, where I failed to find conditions we were told existed.

I

suppose it was the untrained student’s incapacity for seeing, hearing, and feeling what the trained clinician sees, hears, and feels so easily.

The man who lectured to us on gunshot wounds always came in the amphitheatre as though he had been shot out of a gun himself.

His lectures were clear and to the point.

The lecturer on electro-therapeutics was a pleasing, gentle person; the one on diseases of children a trig, dapper little man; and there were other branches--medical chemistry, skin diseases, diseases of eye and ear, and so on--assuredly a busy year.

When, the latter half of the year, we were allowed to take cases, they were assigned us in alphabetical order.

Each student before receiving his degree must have himself managed at least thirty medical, five surgical, and three obstetrical cases; although he was at liberty when necessary to ask a senior to accompany him, and, in grave cases, to call on the Faculty.

All that we knew of our cases till visiting them in their homes was the name and address furnished by the house-physician at the Dispensary.

How exciting those first calls--wondering what we should find!

I well remember the first visit I started out alone to make with my new little medicine-case under my arm: “Lynch, 846 Albany Street” was the legend supplied at the Dispensary.

The place was in a somewhat better locality than many I had visited in company with seniors.

Mounting the stairs, I knocked in some trepidation as I realized I was about to undertake alone my first patient.

What would it be?

Should I be able, after examining her, to know what ailed her?

and what to do for her?

A strapping big Irish woman came to the door.

“Does Mrs. Lynch live here?

” I asked in as professional a tone as I could summon, to which she grudgingly admitted that she did.

“I am the doctor from the Dispensary, I would like to see her.

” “_I_ am Mrs. Lynch,” she said, without opening the door further, “but I’ll have you understand my son is pretty sick--it is no time to fool around; I sent for a doctor, _not for a little girl_.

” I can see myself as I stood there; can feel just how taken aback and indignant I was; how helpless I felt; but it was only momentary.

Pocketing my anger, I said quietly but firmly, “_I_ am the doctor who has been sent to you; if your son is very ill, you must let me see him at once.

” She hesitated, but I added that if, after I prescribed for him, she preferred to have a _man_ doctor, in the morning, I would send one instead.

I chose to relinquish the case, if need be, on the ground of sex rather than youth, thus seeming to preserve my dignity.

She wavered as though not intending to let me in, but I looked at her compellingly, and, with an ungracious snort, she led the way to the sick-room.

There lay a young coal-driver of twenty-five, with high fever, pains in head and limbs and around his heart, and the fear that he was going to die--a case of rheumatic fever.

He looked disappointed as I came in, but was civil; he was too apprehensive to reject even my feeble help.

After listening to the history of the onset, I took his pulse and temperature, asked my questions, which at first the mother refused to answer, but her son answered them; and, as the examination progressed, she herself vouchsafed bits of information, showing some lessening of hostility.

Prescribing, and giving strict and explicit directions about medicine and diet, on leaving, I said, “I will come early in the morning to see how he is; if you then wish a male physician, I will have one sent for the next visit.

” She was less uncivil as she showed me out.

I prescribed _rhus toxicodendron_.

That very afternoon the lecturer had discussed the remedy.

My case seemed made to order for it.

Though prescribing without a moment’s hesitation, still I rushed home and looked up my notes, and studied the subject in the books, finding to my satisfaction that the remedy was well prescribed.

In those days one had abundant faith that the remedies, if correctly applied, that is, if the true _similimum_ be found, would do all they promised.

My class-mates laughed at my rebuff, but congratulated me on effecting an entrance, and on the selection of the remedy.

Early in the morning I hastened to my patient.

At the door the big woman met me with the warmth and cordiality that only an Irish woman can Show when so disposed: “Come in, Doctor, come right in; my son do be feelin’ better, God bless you!

” Of course he was better; had I not given him _rhus tox_ when all his symptoms called for it?

I have since wondered what I should have thought, or done, had my patient failed to respond to the remedy; but there he was, surprisingly better, it was plain to see.

It was my time for revenge: Treating the woman’s warmth with the same apparent indifference that I had her insolence, I allowed myself an outlet for my satisfaction in cordiality to my patient.

Going carefully over his symptoms I found him indeed better, though still far from well, and this I told him.

Mixing fresh medicine, and giving fresh directions as to his care, I told him he ought to get on nicely now;

and then, turning to the woman, said, “To-morrow I will have one of the male physicians make the visit.

” The patient began to protest, and the woman herself to show disappointment: “Oh, no, Doctor, I guess you’ll do as well as anybody.

” But I wickedly replied that I thought she would be better pleased to have another doctor, and I could easily arrange it.

Then she pleaded with me not to throw up the case--no one could do so well--her son would get worse if he had a change of doctors, and so on.

So, not wishing to excite my patient, and thinking I had punished her enough, I condescended to keep the case.

He made a good recovery, and Mrs. Lynch was one of my staunchest advocates after that, recommending me to her neighbours in glowing praise.

She also recommended her son to me: “Mike do be thinkin’ a lot of you, Doctor, for savin’ his life.

He’s a good boy, is Mike, and will make someone a good man; he gets twinty dollars a month, and has no bad habits, Doctor.

Sure an’ a woman might do worse.

But Mike says, he says to me, ‘Now, Mother, you do be talkin’ nonsense--the Doctor ain’t for the loikes of me.

’” I can laugh now at the rebuffs I met on account of my youth, not only when in College, but even when practising in U----, but it was hard to laugh at them then.

Hence, I suppose, the dignity I instinctively assumed to make up for my short stature and lack of years.

I learned, toward the close of my medical course, that it had been customary among the students to speak of me as “the dignified little Miss Arnold.

” This dignity was no pose.

I was dreadfully in earnest, and felt keenly this drawback to success.

There was Miss Wilkins in the same class, no older than I _as a doctor_, but her years and her spectacles were passports to immediate acceptance, and she got credit for being wise where I was scarcely tolerated.

Exasperation was no name for it!

I

lost one obstetrical case in my third year just because of this: After I had made my first visit, the patient sent me a polite note saying her husband was unwilling to go so far as my boarding-place for a doctor; that she would have liked to have me, and hoped I wouldn’t be offended--all a pretense--she was afraid to trust herself in my hands.

Under this suddenly terminated record in my note-book I wrote with a sigh, “Oh, for the bonnet and spectacles of Miss Wilkins!

” Even within a few months of graduation, while shopping for a cloak, I was chagrined to have the saleswoman tell the taller, but younger, girl who, accompanying me, acted as spokesman, “Oh, you will have to take _her_ into the misses’ department.

” The “misses’ department,” indeed!

and I almost ready to take my degree!

and I would have to be taken in--I could not even go there myself!

It amuses me now to recall what a sore point this was with me.