He shall be trephined—that is to say, a round hole shall be neatly cut in his cranium, and the brain exposed at the injured part; and while the organ of the mind is open to the view, are there not many pretty ideas to be discoursed of, and various experiments awaiting trial? Are there not galvanic batteries at hand? Is not the man at their mercy? He has ether or chloroform, and able men of science about him; and, if they don’t cure him, they will doubtless get information that will enable them to cure some much more important personage! It is not enough to have done all this on a monkey; it needs a man before you can be quite sure. Ultimately they will do it with safety to a gentleman, a duke, a royal prince, and the successful operation will make somebody’s fortune. So as every rising surgeon carries a royal surgeon’s baton in his instrument bag, have at the butcher! The house surgeon “went round” with our new dresser, and explained the nature of each case in very brief terms, and in a perfunctory manner. It was his duty to instruct his dressers, and he did it after a fashion; but he was not paid to do anything of the sort, and, with the young and partially-educated, there is often a sort of contempt for those who know just a little less than they do. The scorn felt and expressed by the Board School child who knows decimals, for his companion just beginning vulgar fractions, is nothing to the sense of superiority assumed by a house surgeon appointed a few weeks since, and aged twenty-three, towards his unqualified dressers, who cannot go up for examination for another six months. And the dresser, in his turn, looks down from his exalted post on those late companions of his who failed at the primary, and have not yet achieved the right to handle cases in the wards.