The second year in College was the busiest. We had more studies, more instructors, and a more varied life in every way. They lectured us on disease-conditions and on the remedies to be applied. There were the various clinics in the dispensary department—throat clinics, chest clinics, women’s clinics, surgical clinics, children’s clinics, and so on, where, under the various instructors, we were required to examine and diagnose cases and to watch the result of treatment. Patients too ill to come to the clinics were visited in their homes by the senior students, and by the “middlers” after the first half of their second year. Before taking cases, however, we went with the seniors on their visits to get a little familiar with the work. Once on going with a senior to an obstetric case, we found the baby already born, and the cord tied and cut! A half-witted sister of the patient met us at the door; the woman lay on the bed with no sheets on it; the new baby, naked and cold, was crying vigorously; and, playing on the bed beside the mother, was a little five-year-old who had been there through the labour. It seems when the baby came and the patient had told her sister to cut the cord, the sister refusing, the woman had sat up in bed and cut it herself!
What a mass of instruction was thrust upon us that second year! I enjoyed most the lectures of our professor in materia medica. A charming man, enthusiastic, fluent, apt at illustration—a more ready and engaging speaker I have never heard. Taking all he said as gospel-truth, I was not a little disturbed toward the close of that year to hear the seniors insinuate that he never spoiled a story for the truth’s sake; that he would tell of some wonderful case one year, ascribing the favourable termination to a certain remedy, and the next year would forget and tell of it under quite another remedy! Each disclosure of this kind came as a shock; it was so difficult—it is, even now—to believe that people are not what they seem.
One man, our professor in pathology, never swerved one jot or tittle from the truth. This trait was so strong that he seemed always to be telling us what not to believe; he was for ever exposing shams and false theories, dubbing them “all fol-de-rol.” He gave us clear, concise pictures of diseases; told what measures to adopt to relieve them; what remedies to rely on, so far as remedies could be of service; but never failed to impress upon us that “the books lie, and doctors lie,” if they claim that cases follow the typical courses so beautifully pictured; or that remedies, however well selected, will invariably relieve. There was a touch of peevishness in his attempts to make us chary about believing the stock statements in the books. I had a great liking for him; his earnestness appealed to me. Abrupt and brusque as he was, on the rare occasions when he smiled, his smile had that distinctive charm that an infrequent smile always lends to a stern, serious face. He was an excellent offset to the optimism and enthusiasm of our professor in materia medica.
(A few years ago he came on as guest of honour and read a paper at our State Medical Society meeting in Brooklyn. He looked much older, his hair was thinned and white, but his voice had the old scornful ring, and carried me back to those student days in Boston; every familiar inflection was a fresh delight; and to make it more realistic, there was dear Dr. Wilkins who had come on, too—the Miss Wilkins who had so mothered me in college—past and present were strangely blended that day: on the platform Dr. “Conrad,” whose tones made me a student again; by my side the class-mate who had sat with me in the old days and listened to those same tones; while all around me were also friends and associates of to-day, else I surely should have felt myself a girl again and back in the old lecture room.)
Our professor in throat diseases was no favourite with the students. He had a smooth face, china-blue eyes, and wore a brown wig. We thought him vain, and knew he was irritable; and we failed to get much out of his lectures or clinics. Once I asked him to go with me in consultation to a home where I suspected my case was diphtheria; he went and, confirming my diagnosis with alacrity, hurried out of the house, showing such personal apprehension that it made me feel a bit contemptuous. He asked me if I were not afraid of it, and advised me, wisely, to send the case at once to the city hospital, which I did.
The same professor whom we had had the first year in the History of Medicine, instructed us in diseases of the chest; friendly and approachable, he gave us good lectures and valuable clinics.
The Dean, bless his heart! lectured to us on surgery. He always seemed in a hurry; he was an easy talker. Some of the students were inclined to belittle his skill as an operator, though admitting that he had been an excellent surgeon in his palmier days. Anyhow, he had force and charm, and was an indefatigable worker, and a warm-hearted, tactful man.
In obstetrics we had an able man, friendly, alert, conscientious, and a good instructor.
The professor in diseases of women was a pretty, fascinating woman, a general favourite; she had a big practice over on the Back Bay. We students thought her charmingly inefficient as a lecturer; it was a pleasure to look at her, and to listen to her, but her lectures were thin, and her clinics disappointing. I could so seldom find what she would tell us we ought to find in the cases, and when I would say I couldn’t, she would smile in her bewitching way and say, “Oh, but you must, it is there”; and then I would try again, often unsuccessfully, while she seemed to have little aptitude to make me find the thing in question. Somehow, we got in the way of not taking her very seriously; but, come to think of it, it is hardly fair to single her out as the cause of my stupidity, for there were clinics of the other professors as well, where I failed to find conditions we were told existed. I suppose it was the untrained student’s incapacity for seeing, hearing, and feeling what the trained clinician sees, hears, and feels so easily.
The man who lectured to us on gunshot wounds always came in the amphitheatre as though he had been shot out of a gun himself. His lectures were clear and to the point.