To amuse them and impress them with the idea of his wit, he would, in the presence of patient and nurses, often tell shady stories as broad as they were long. Such droll scenes, such lively contests between one weak, suffering woman (for he would never permit a patient to bring mother or friend into his room), and this brilliant physician and his admiring, tittering pupils, made the gynæcological out-patients’ days the great fun of the place. “Beats Punch into fits!” said Murphy. “Never half as much spree at the play!” vowed Robins. But it was poor spree and very mitigated fun to the hundreds of afflicted creatures who sought this great doctor’s aid; for great he was and very skilful, and had saved many thousands of sufferers from pain and discomfort. He was a generous, patient, useful man, and in his private practice was everything that could be desired in a doctor; but he thought, and that thoroughly, that he was at St. Bernard’s first to interest and teach in the completest manner all the men who attended his classes. If in this doctor-factory any sick woman could avail herself of the by-product or waste for her cure or relief, she was heartily welcome. In any case, her attendance served his purpose very well indeed—unless she became troublesome, and refused to comply with some of his too outrageous demands, and then her letter would be taken from her, and marked by the doctor “_Refuses treatment_,” and she would be escorted out of the hospital by one of the nurses. Sometimes “a very pretty case,” as they called good clinical subjects, would be taken into the wards, with the assurance that it could only be effectually treated there, but really that it might be daily examined and watched by the students, although it would have done as well or even better at home. Thus he used a bed—at say a cost of a pound a week for two months,—a bed which in another case, far worse but not so interesting, would have been much better engaged. Of course the pupils were not unmindful of all these efforts for their advancement when they got into practice; and as they were daily qualifying, Dr. Stanforth was daily making a number of valuable friends. CHAPTER XXIX. AN IDEAL PHYSICIAN. The Christ Himself had been no Lawgiver, Unless He had given the life, too, with the law. —_Elizabeth B. Browning._ He hansels not his new experiments on the bodies of his patients, letting loose mad receipts into the sick man’s body, to try how well nature in him will fight against them, whilst himself stands by and sees the battle.—_Thomas Fuller._