"'More than he does of the practice, I'll be bound,' tittered a little wasp of a dandy—a West End ladies' doctor.
"I trembled in my shoes.
"'Well, sir,' continued the stout man, 'what would you do if a man was brought to you during action with his arms and legs shot off? Now, sir, don't keep the Board waiting! What would you do? Make haste!'
"'By Jove, sir!' I answered—a thought just striking me—'I should pitch him overboard, and go on to some one else I could be of more service to.'
"By — —! every one present burst out laughing; and they passed me directly, sir—passed me directly!"
The examiners doubtless felt that a young man who could manifest such presence of mind on such an occasion, and so well reply to a terrorizing question, might be trusted to act wisely on other emergencies.
Many stories of a similar kind are very old acquaintances of most of our readers.
"What"—an examiner of the same Board is reported to have said to a candidate—"would you have recourse to if, after having ineffectually tried all the ordinary diaphoretics, you wanted to throw your patient, in as short a time as possible, into a profuse perspiration?"
"I should send him here, sir, to be examined," was the reply.
Not less happy was the audacity of the medical student to Abernethy.