The coloured diagrams round the walls, and the illustrations in the text-books used, serve to complete our acquaintance with the matter in hand, and its daily repetition fixes it in the memory. The men do their work in great linen blouses or aprons with sleeves. Most of them smoke, and the dissecting-room certainly is one place from which the most violent anti-tobacco agitator would hardly wish to banish it, if he knew how it mitigates its awful odours. When the morning is over, and the men have taken their lunch (they eat sandwiches at their work without the least fastidiousness), few of them return for any more work in that place unless they chance to be very industrious. There are some few men who, in their first and second year, dissect on every available opportunity; for anatomy cannot be crammed, and can only be mastered by this persistent business of the scalpel. Occasionally a visitor will drop in to look round at the work going on; some general practitioner who has been at the school in his early days, to refresh his memory on some point, or to rekindle for a few moments the lost enthusiasm in such studies. Often they tell good stories of the difficulties they had in the olden time of procuring bodies. One old fellow who had been a demonstrator in that room, told one day how, on one occasion some fifty years before, he had been urging the beadle to provide more subjects. “Can’t get you a fresh ’un before this day week, sir,” replied the man. “You see, sir, it is my mother-in-law. She only died last night. She will be buried on Thursday. We’ll have her up the same night, and she’ll be ready next morning for you.” And then he related how the body-snatchers went to Bow Cemetery, then almost out in the country, and “resurrected” the poor woman, stripped her of her shroud (to take which was felony), put her in a light cart, and drove off with her. On either side of the Bow road at that time were fields; it was very dark and lonely. When half-way towards their destination they feared they were closely pursued, and to avoid a capture they cast the body out into the ditch, and made off with all haste. Next morning there was a report of a horrible murder. An inquest followed, and an open verdict was returned, name and cause of death unknown. Close by the hospital there dwelt an aged man with his daughter in genteel poverty, a learned and serious person, who seemed to have known better days. His conversation was charming, and his society was much sought after, but seldom accorded. He kept himself apart from his neighbours, and held no more intercourse with them than was necessary for the amenities of life. But he was on good terms with the St. Bernard’s staff, often strolled through the dissecting-room and the museum, and was generally present in the operating theatre when anything of special interest was “on the table.”