"But," said I, in amazement, "you have not mentioned yet what you would have me do." "I have told you fully a hundred times to put this thermometer under your tongue and keep it there," replied she, exhibiting considerable temper, as she viciously jammed it once more into my mouth and twisted it under my tongue. "You are about the biggest chump that ever came into this hospital," continued she, grasping my wrist as though she intended breaking it and simultaneously taking my pulse and temperature. A few moments later she jerked the thermometer from my mouth, glanced at it hurriedly and then entered a record upon a chart suspended from the head of my bed. Then calling one of the male attendants, she instructed him to fill the tub preparatory to giving me an ice bath. This attendant went to the corner of the room from whence he secured a bath tub on wheels, which he pushed over to the side of my bed. The tub was already partly filled with water, and I afterward learned that owing to the laziness and filthiness of the attendants, the same water was often used over and over again for the different typhoid patients. I observed that this attendant, who was otherwise called an orderly, was about as ignorant and degraded a specimen of humanity as a much boasted civilization could possibly breed. He was about six feet tall, round-shouldered, knock-kneed, and weighed about two hundred pounds of flabby flesh, mostly covered by filthy garments. His head was pyramidal in shape, and covered by a mass of unkempt red hair. He had practically no forehead. His eyes were dull and bloodshot. His nose was flat and bent to one side, and his whole face was covered with pimples. His mouth was wide and beastly, and filled with tobacco. His mustache was irregular, and dyed almost to the roots by tobacco juice. His breath was odoriferous with fumes of whiskey, cigarettes, and foul stomach disorders, causing a poisonous stench to pollute the surrounding atmosphere. One could not look upon him without a feeling of sickening disgust. He was a twentieth century American civilized Christian. He was not, of course, the highest type of a civilized Christian, but nevertheless he was of a high enough order for a Christian community to breed, rear, and put in charge of its sick and unfortunate members. As he pushed the tub along he carelessly allowed it to strike the end of my bed, which gave me a shock as though I had been pierced by a thousand daggers, causing an involuntary groan to escape from my lips. "Shut up there, you old duffer," said he, looking at me in a stupid, expressionless sort of a way, "you are not hurt yet. I'll give you something to cry about if you don't quit making such a fuss over nothing. You're the biggest baby I ever saw."