The “Schools” building, though modern, is one of the stateliest on the Main Street. Here, in old peaceful times, the university examinations used to be held. Now it is transformed into a hospital for the wounded men from the fighting front of freedom.
Sir William Osier, Canadian, and world-renowned physician, is my guide, an old friend in Baltimore, now Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford.
“Come,” he says, “I want you to see an example of the Carrel treatment of wounds.”
The patient is sitting up in bed—a fine young fellow about twenty years old. A shrapnel-shell, somewhere in France, passed over his head and burst just behind him. His bare back is a mass of scars. The healing fluid is being pumped in through the shattered elbow of his right arm, not yet out of danger.
“Does it hurt,” I ask.
“Not much,” he answers, trying to smile, “at least not too much, M'sieu'.”
The accent of French Canada is unmistakable. I talk to him in his own dialect.
“What part of Quebec do you come from?”
“From Trois Rivieres, M'sieu', or rather from a country back of that, the Saint Maurice River.”
“I know it well—often hunted there. But what made you go to the war?”