The bell rang for the operation, to assemble the students, some of whom said “It was a beastly shame to torture a poor wretch who hadn’t a chance of getting over it.”
“Ah, you won’t talk like that when you are house surgeon (H.S. they always termed it) yourself. You will be glad to operate on your own father if you can’t get anybody else. Besides, what are hospitals for, if not to qualify us for our work? If people don’t want us to learn all we can from them, why don’t they stay at home and die? The parish doctor won’t disturb their latter moments with operations.”
And so, while the case was being discussed by the novelty-hunting lads, and the grim tools of the surgeons were being selected and placed on a pretty little table by the side of the couch in the theatre, and covered with a white napkin;—while the nurses were assembling who had to assist, and the surgeon refreshing his memory by a last peep at the text-book directing the steps of the operation;—while the poor patient, who, after much worrying, had at last consented to undergo what he was told was a trifling affair that would be certain to cure him—an agonised young woman, with a baby at her breast, was pacing up and down the courtyard of the “cathedral of surgery,” as the Sunday papers called it, feeling that her poor husband was fast leaving her and his little home, and much doubting if she should have given that young doctor her consent to cut and hack the sinking frame of the father of her babe. But what was she to do? Had not five well speaking, kind-looking gentlemen told her that very morning it was the only chance of saving him? Did not the pretty nurse and the ladylike sister urge her to do just whatever the doctor in charge of the case advised? There was only her own heart, her sad misgivings, standing between her and the operation that they said was to give her Jimmy back to health. She had yielded; it was to be done. She had seen him, and kissed him; but her heart told her she would see him and hear his voice no more in life.
A kind porter in the place let her sit down in his room and await the result. Before nightfall, she was a widow. The announcement was made to her by one of the dressers, who coupled his bad news with a request from the authorities for leave to make a post-mortem examination. For James Green had yet something to contribute to science and St. Bernard’s; he had given his life; had presented a rising young surgeon with his first opportunity for a great and interesting operation. He had still something more to bestow—his dead body. It was considered a grievous oversight, and a wrong to the institution, if a patient who had died there failed to make his or her appearance on the post-mortem table at four o’clock the next day, not only that it might be seen and demonstrated by skilled pathologists just where and how the operation had gone wrong, but for the sake of all the beautiful and instructive things that might be shown in brain, or heart, or lungs. For statistical purposes, for treatises being written, for papers for learned societies on all and every of the ailments of humanity, it was ill fortune to let a sectio cadaveris slip, as one never knew what one might be losing. They had an euphemistic way of asking the relatives’ permission for what they termed a “P.M.”
“You don’t object to a slight examination, do you, just to find out the real cause of death, so as to make the death certificate all right?”
Who could object? Few understood what it all meant, fewer thought they had any power to object; so the cases were rare where the ruse failed.
There is a widespread feeling amongst the people against post-mortem examinations. There is a vague apprehension that portions of their deceased friend’s anatomy may appear “in spirits in a vial,” in some museum or other. When the remains of the relative come back from the hospital, it is unpleasant to feel doubts as to their integrity. Visions of important portions of their internal economy lying perdu in back gardens of students’ lodgings, the prey of the too inquisitive cat or investigating terrier, are not altogether baseless. Hundreds of back gardens in London doubtless do contain such material, as we have frequent proof. Many thousands of museum shelves are loaded with preparations of such departed friends. It is doubtless, in the abstract, absurd to object to these common practices; but when it comes home to a mother to ask how she would like her dead child’s remains disposed of, it is perfectly natural, and not at all absurd, to suppose that with her whole heart, she would earnestly demand that they should be reverently interred in Christian ground, and be as little mutilated as possible.
The Jews are very reluctant to allow post-mortem examinations on their relatives; and, when such a thing is unavoidable, as by coroner’s order, an official from the synagogue is present to see that nothing is abstracted. It has often happened that the friends have discovered that portions of the corpse have been withheld or lost; and, as such detention of human remains is forbidden by law, the authorities have had to compensate the relatives by handsome sums towards the funeral expenses. Nevertheless, one shilling will still purchase a healthy, adult human brain to dissect quietly at home; and the emptiness of the dead person’s head is not always a cause of surprise. A judicious porter in the P.M. room has often found the cranial cavity a good receptacle for the liver, thus balancing matters comfortably.