Sometimes “a very pretty case,” as they called good clinical subjects, would be taken into the wards, with the assurance that it could only be effectually treated there, but really that it might be daily examined and watched by the students, although it would have done as well or even better at home. Thus he used a bed—at say a cost of a pound a week for two months,—a bed which in another case, far worse but not so interesting, would have been much better engaged. Of course the pupils were not unmindful of all these efforts for their advancement when they got into practice; and as they were daily qualifying, Dr. Stanforth was daily making a number of valuable friends.
CHAPTER XXIX.
AN IDEAL PHYSICIAN.
The Christ Himself had been no Lawgiver,
Unless He had given the life, too, with the law.
—Elizabeth B. Browning.
He hansels not his new experiments on the bodies of his patients, letting loose mad receipts into the sick man’s body, to try how well nature in him will fight against them, whilst himself stands by and sees the battle.—Thomas Fuller.
Darwin spending whole nights watching pots of earth-worms, and studying minutely the habits of these creatures—Thoreau exiling himself from civilization that he might learn how to live cheerfully and healthily, in company with the animals of the forest, are examples of the true method of learning from Nature. There can be no real sympathy with those with whom we have to deal apart from an intense desire to know them intimately. Can we expect to reach the heart of Nature except by the royal road of love?
Elsworth learned this in his voluntary exile,—learned that he could interrogate Nature, get at her secrets and apply them to the healing of mankind, when he had reverently put off the shoes from his feet and entered her temple as a worshipper, rather than as the devastator placing the abomination of desolation in the holy place. The secret of Nature, as of the Lord, is with them that fear her.
To analyse a rose is a poor way of learning the sweetness of its perfume; to master the language of a country is of the first necessity to knowing anything about its people.