The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

It pleased him also to find that W.G. was thankful for his decision. “You see, it would have been rotten for me,” he said, “if you and Maskew had both been left behind. When you’ve got into the habit of working with a fellow in your first two years, it’s a bit of a break to have to go on by yourself. Of course, I should never have the least earthly chance of getting the Fellowship, and even if I had, I couldn’t afford to waste a year over it. I’m damned glad you’re coming on with me, Ingleby.”

The tribute was flattering. Edwin, always rather pathetically anxious for friendship, was particularly pleased to have it offered so frankly by a creature as unlike him in every way as W.G. There was something stable and reliable about the big man’s simplicity. He felt that he would be as loath to give offence to W.G. as to his father; and though he still felt some indefinite hankerings after the atmosphere of culture that he would have enjoyed in the society of Boyce, he couldn’t deny the fact that W.G. was a sound and splendid fellow, and a good man to have by his side in an emergency. Together they plunged into the new world of hospital life.

II

Two general hospitals supplied the clinical needs of the North Bromwich Medical School. The older, from which the school had originated, was a small institution, the Prince’s, with which Edwin had become acquainted on the occasion of his first panto-night. It stood in the upper and healthier part of the city, in the middle of the slums that lie upon the fringe of the fashionable suburb of Alvaston: a solid building of early Victorian red brick, with a stone portico facing upon a thoroughfare of rather older houses that had once been reputable but had now degenerated into theatrical lodging-houses.

The hospital itself was small enough to be homely, and W.G. and Edwin soon became accustomed to its narrow entrance hall, and the lodge in which porters, who already knew all that was to be known about the reception of casualties, were housed.

Edwin would arrive at the hospital early in the morning, when no sign of life was to be seen in the “professional” lodgings sleeping with drawn blinds upon the other side of the road. At this time of the day the hospital porch smelt clean and antiseptic, for the stream of stinking humanity had not yet begun to trickle through. He would hang his coat in the narrow passage that served for cloakroom and lounge with a cigarette in his mouth before the glass-fronted notice-boards on which the lists of operations for the day were exhibited, and exchange greetings with the night porter departing in a state of drowsy ill-temper, or the day-porter coming on duty with a military swagger and his grey hair plastered down with vaseline, from the casualty department, and cold water.

Here, too, the members of the consulting staff would arrive in their frock-coats and top-hats: great men, such as Lloyd Moore, the outstanding surgical genius of the Midlands; old Beaton, the professor of surgery, with his long, grey beard, and Hartley, the ophthalmologist, whose reputation was European. These giants would pass on through the swinging doors to their wards or consulting rooms, and on the very stroke of nine, W.G., who was a bad riser, and always cut things fine, would plunge in, carrying with him the strenuous atmosphere of a cold sponge and breezy enthusiasm. Then the clock would strike nine, and they would pass on together arm in arm, into the huge, airy waiting-hall with innumerable benches set crosswise like the pews in a church; and, at the same moment, the military porter, who had been marshalling the queue of out-patients, would release them, and a bewildering crowd of poorly-clad human wreckage would drift in behind them, settling patiently into the benches opposite the door of the department from which they were seeking relief.

The work of Edwin and W.G. lay in the Casualty Department, a small room full of pleasant morning light. On one side of it ran a long counter with shelves for bottles, and drawers in which plasters, dressings, and ointments were kept. On the other, half a dozen chairs were ranged for the reception of patients. The medical staff consisted of four persons only: two professionals, a young and enthusiastic surgeon named Mather who held the post of Assistant Surgeon to Out-patients, and an elderly sister who had been on the job for years, and two amateurs in the shape of Edwin and W.G.

All of them were clothed in white overalls; for the work of the casualty department was of a dirty nature, and these long garments also served as some protection from the swarming parasites that lived upon the bodies of their patients. Edwin, who suffered agonies of irritation from their attacks, also armed himself with a glass-stoppered bottle of ether with which he would drench the seat of irritation in the hopes of inflicting death or at least unconsciousness upon his tormentors.

Then, one by one, the patients would file in, and plant themselves upon the wooden chairs: old men whose skins were foul with the ravages of eczema and dirt combined; women, exhausted in middle age by child-bearing, and the accepted slavery of housework; sturdy mechanics who had been the victims of some unavoidable accident; pale young women, made anxious for their livelihood by illness that its conditions had caused, and, more terrible than all, the steady stream of wan, transparent children, the idols of maternal care, the victims of maternal ignorance.