“You are sure you couldn’t save his leg anyhow?”
“Quite sure.”
It was not for the good clergyman to argue the case, so he went to the couch on which lay the crushed form of his suffering countryman and co-religionist, bent over him and whispered loving words in his ear, and commanded him in the name of the Church to submit to lose his limb that his life might be saved, as the doctors desired.
Without another word of resistance the man obeyed, and gave the surgeon permission to do as he would with him. The good priest blessed the man, and, with tears in his eyes, turning to the grateful young doctor, said in a whisper,—
“But I hope it is really necessary.”
“Oh, certainly, father, or I wouldn’t think of it.”
His reverence did not seem quite so convinced on that score as he might have been, and left the place with a sigh. A message was immediately sent to the visiting surgeon of the week, who lived close by and who had long promised the young doctor “something good before he went off.” He soon arrived, approved of Wilson’s suggestion, and congratulated him on his “opportunity,” for he was an amiable and benevolent teacher, who liked his pupils “to feel their feet” as he used to say.
Of course it was given out that the great man was to operate (that was a precaution always taken) the teachers never shirked any responsibility, their backs were broad enough for everything, and when the anæsthetic had done its work,“who was to know? That’s the beauty of chloroform,” said Wilson. “Qui facit per alium, facit per se,” added the professor,“that is an axiom in law and that must be right!” So the bell was rung that called the students to assemble in the theatre where the operations took place, and all was ready. Mr. Wilson was not quite easy in his mind; his conscience told him he was sacrificing this Irish labourer’s chance of preserving his injured limb (and that limb meant so much more to him and his than to a rich man) to his own advancement in the surgeon’s art. But that conscience was soon silenced. He had learned how to crush out all feelings of pity that interfered with his “work” long ago in the physiological room. He was tender, kind, and a lover of the lower animals when he began his course there, when he first obeyed the order of his teacher to slice off a piece of a living frog’s eye and rub lunar caustic on the injured organ. He shuddered when the professor said: “It won’t be nice for the frog, but it will be useful to you!” But he shuddered less next time, and when he had conquered his aversion to the torture of living dogs which licked his hands before he began, it was not difficult to do any work in the operating theatre on human beings which science might demand.
“So patients must suffer that surgeons may learn,
And women must weep when their husbands return