CHAPTER III
School life continues—Her mother begins training for career of midwife—Because of eye trouble, Marie resides in hospital with her mother, and becomes protégée of Dr. Müller—First real knowledge of medicine as a career—Adventure in morgue and dissecting rooms—Begins to read medical books. (Nine to eleven years of age: 1838-1840.)
At the end of the year, my cousin left the hospital. At the same time, trouble and constant sickness fell upon our family.
My father, who held liberal opinions and was of an impetuous temperament, manifested some revolutionary tendencies, which drew upon him the displeasure of the government and caused his dismissal, with a very small pension, from his position as military officer. This involved us in great pecuniary difficulties, for our family was large and my father’s income too small to supply the most necessary wants, and to obtain other occupation was for the time out of the question.
In this emergency, my mother determined to petition the city government for admission to the school of midwives established in Berlin, in order in this manner to aid in the support of the family. Influential friends of my father secured her the election, and she was admitted to the school in 1839, I being at that time ten years of age.
The education of midwives for Berlin requires a two years’ course of study, during six months of which, they are obliged to reside in the hospital to receive instructions from the professors together with the male students. My mother went there in the summer of 1840. I went to stay at the house of an aunt who wished my company, and the rest of the children were put out together, to board.
In a few weeks my eyes became affected with weakness so that I could neither read nor write, and I begged my mother to let me stay with her in the hospital. She applied for permission to the director and received a favorable answer.
I was placed under the care of one of the physicians (Dr. Müller), who took a great fancy to me and made me go with him wherever he went while engaged in the hospital. My eyes being bandaged, he led me by the hand, calling me his “little blind doctor.” In this way, I was constantly with him, hearing all his questions and directions, which impressed themselves the more strongly on my mind from the fact that I could not see but had to gain all my knowledge through hearing alone.
One afternoon, when I had taken the bandage off my eyes for the first time, Dr. Müller told me that there was a corpse of a young man in the dead-house that had turned completely green in consequence of poison that he had eaten. I went there after my rounds with him, but finding the room filled with relatives who were busily engaged in adorning the body with flowers, I thought that I would not disturb them but would wait until they had gone before I looked at it; meanwhile I went through the adjoining rooms.
These were all freshly painted. The dissecting tables, with the necessary apparatus, stood in the center, while the bodies, clad in white gowns, were ranged on boards along the walls. I examined everything, came back, and looked to my heart’s content at the poisoned young man, without noticing that, not only had the relatives left but the prosector had also gone away, after locking up the whole building.