he occasionally hid in the porter’s lodge to avoid Baker’s critical eyes. He warned Dr Moore (who was a candidate for the Wardenship of the College) that those same eyes were on him in the matter of dress.
Sir William Church, who wrote on the Hospital Pharmacopœia, gives some astonishing facts. From 1866 to 1875 the annual consumption of sulphate of magnesia was 42½ hundredweights, i.e., about two cart-loads. “In 1836 8¾ tons of linseed meal were used, while from 1876 to 1885 the annual average was 15¾ tons, but in 1911 the poultice was so nearly obsolete that 3 cwt. sufficed. In 1837 96,300 leeches were used; . . . in 1868 the number had sunk to 2200. . . . It is now (1911) about 700” (ii., p. 714).
Chloroform first appears in the apothecaries’ ledger on 22nd November 1847, just one week after the publication of Sir James Y. Simpson’s treatise.
A pound of pure carbolic acid was used in 1865, in 1911 the quantity was 2½ tons. Nurses have increased from a “matron and eleven sisters in the reign of King Edward VI. to the matron, assistant-matron, thirty-eight sisters, and 268 nurses who form the highly trained nursing staff of the present day” (ii., p. 778).
I cannot resist quoting a reminiscence of Mr Mark Morris, the Steward of the Hospital, who was born early enough to remember “several cases . . . of wives who had been sold in Smithfield. A rope was loosely thrown round them, and as the seller handed the end of the rope to the buyer, the buyer gave him a shilling. The new marriage was regarded
. . . as in every way reputable and complete” (ii., p. 789).
We have space for but a few of Dr Moore’s pleasant reminiscences. A woman came from South Wales whose only language was Welsh. Her husband’s native language was Irish, and he had learned Welsh, but could speak no English. A scavenger came into the Casualty Department named Michael O’Clery. “An illustrious name,” said the physician (N. M.?) remembering a certain famous chronicler. The scavenger explained accurately to which part of the family of hereditary historians he belonged.
“Another patient, a shoemaker . . . gave the name of Conellan. ‘Have you ever heard,’ said the physician, ‘of Owen Conellan, who wrote a grammar?’ ‘My relation,’ replied the patient, ‘historiographer to His Majesty King George IV.’ Thus was the physician instructed in the biography of the grammarian” (ii., p. 873).
A mountebank, who gained his living by thrusting a sword, about a foot long, down his gullet was admitted to a surgical ward. The treatment consisted in putting probangs of india-rubber down the gullet, and in this the patient was more adroit than the highly skilled surgeon who attended him (ii., p. 874).
I like, too, the case of a patient who was described as an “arrow-maker,” and on being asked whether he did not call himself a fletcher, said, “Yes, but I thought you would not know.” We read, also, of ruler-makers with “their hair turned green by the