CHAPTER XXVIII.
DR. STANFORTH WITH HIS PUPILS.
His story would not have been worth one farthing if He had made the hat of him whom he represented one inch narrower.—Steele.
Natural ferocity makes fewer cruel people than self love.—La Rochefoucauld.
Dr. Stanforth knew everybody, from “a very exalted personage,” with whom he led the students to believe he was on terms of close intimacy, down to the most insignificant disciple of Galen who had ever been connected with the hospital. He never permitted a patient to baffle him; he always pretended that he knew all about him or her, and had his or her medical history at his fingers’ ends. His days in the out-patients’ rooms were looked forward to by the students with delight. He was so droll; he teased the pert and knowing patients worse than any Old Bailey barrister. “There was no getting over Stanforth,” they declared; “he was too much for the artfullest of ’em.” His bete noir was the over-dressed, robust, viragoish lady patient, who could well afford to pay for medical advice, but wanted it for nothing.
“Put out your tongue, madam.”
The lady complied. Carefully adjusting his gold eye-glasses, he would minutely inspect it.
“Did I understand you to say you were a strict teetotaler?”
“No, sir, I am not exactly that: but it’s little I ever touch except a glass of beer with my dinner.”
“No spirits, madam?”