A Medical Document - Page 2

his cash book he
always promises himself that he will get level some
day when a millionaire with a chronic complaint--the
ideal combination--shall seek his services. The
third, sitting on the right with his dress shoes
shining on the top of the fender, is Hargrave, the
rising surgeon. His face has none of the broad
humanity of Theodore Foster's, the eye is stern and
critical, the mouth straight and severe, but there is
strength and decision in every line of it, and it is
nerve rather than sympathy which the patient demands
when he is bad enough to come to Hargrave's door. He
calls himself a jawman "a mere jawman" as he modestly
puts it, but in point of fact he is too young and too
poor to confine himself to a specialty, and there is
nothing surgical which Hargrave has not the skill and
the audacity to do.

"Before, after, and during," murmurs the general
practitioner in answer to some interpolation of the
outsider's. "I assure you, Manson, one sees all
sorts of evanescent forms of madness."

"Ah, puerperal!" throws in the other,
knocking the curved grey ash from his cigar.
"But you had some case in your mind, Foster."

"Well, there was only one last week which was new
to me. I had been engaged by some people of the name
of Silcoe. When the trouble came round I went
myself, for they would not hear of an assistant. The
husband who was a policeman, was sitting at the head
of the bed on the further side. 'This won't do,'
said I. 'Oh yes, doctor, it must do,' said she.
'It's quite irregular and he must go,' said I. 'It's
that or nothing,' said she. 'I won't open my mouth
or stir a finger the whole night,' said he. So it
ended by my allowing him to remain, and there he sat
for eight hours on end. She was very good over the
matter, but every now and again HE would fetch a
hollow groan, and I noticed that he held his right
hand just under the sheet all the time, where I had
no doubt that it was clasped by her left. When it
was all happily over, I looked at him and his face
was the colour of this cigar ash, and his head had
dropped on to the edge of the pillow. Of course I
thought he had fainted with emotion, and I was just
telling myself what I thought of myself for having
been such a fool as to let him stay there, when
suddenly I saw that the sheet over his hand was all
soaked with blood; I whisked it down, and there was
the fellow's wrist half cut through. The woman
had one bracelet of a policeman's handcuff over her
left wrist and the other round his right one. When
she had been in pain she had twisted with all her
strength and the iron had fairly eaten into the bone
of the man's arm. 'Aye, doctor,' said she, when she
saw