St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical StudentBerdoe, Edward
General
St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student
Berdoe, Edward
Medical students -- Fiction
Dissection and the making of a post-mortem examination, though often
confounded in the public mind, differ materially. Dissection consists
in minutely tracing out all the important structures of the limbs,
body, and vital organs, and thus it takes several weeks’ hard work to
get through a whole subject; while a post-mortem examination is the
labour of an hour or two, and consists in examining and noting the
pathological conditions of the internal organs, with a view merely to
discovering the cause of death. An adult subject is worth about £5 when
properly prepared for research. Each arm and leg, the half of the head,
the chest, and the rest of the trunk, was charged to the student
requiring it at St. Bernard’s, 12_s._ 6_d._, and he was expected to
make good use of his opportunity. Every portion removed by his scalpel
was carefully gathered up by a porter, and every night and morning
placed in a coffin in the vaults below. When a coffin is filled with
this minutely divided humanity, it is sent to a cemetery and buried as
“our brethren and sisters departed.” The provisions of the Anatomy Act
forbid the taking of any portion of the subjects out of the schools;
nevertheless more than one ardent student whom we see in the room will
finish his work on the hand or the foot at his own lodgings, to the
horror and disgust of his landlady if she catches him at it.
Some men never make good dissectors; they can cram up what they want
for their examinations without the infinite pains required for a
beautiful “preparation” such as is being made at this table on our
right for the college museum. It is an arm, and every muscle stands out
clean and clear, every artery is seen with its vermilion wax injection
running its sharply defined course, and anastomosing with its
neighbouring vessels. Here are the nerves like silver threads,
becoming, like the blood supply, smaller as they reach the fingers,
till they are lost in their terminations at the tips. It requires a man
with a special genius, and the gift of an infinite capacity for taking
pains, to do work like this, and many take a pride in doing it.
Round this table on the left is a group of junior students, listening
to the demonstrator, who is lecturing on the muscles of the chest, or
thorax as it is called, and asking each of his auditors in turn some
question to test his knowledge, and explain his difficulties if he have
any.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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