‘And so she took you to live with her, when this worthy Mrs—yes, Linklater died,’ said the Countess encouragingly. ‘But how came you to leave her?’
Ethel’s explanation of that was clear enough. Mrs Keating’s health, always frail, had given way, and she had been ordered to a warmer climate. Dr Keating, who had accompanied his wife to Mentone and Bellaggio, had a curate to pay and heavy expenses to meet. It was necessary that Ethel should get her own living; and it was at her own suggestion that Dr Keating had sought for her that appointment as mistress of a village school which his acquaintance with the Earl had enabled him to obtain for her at High Tor.
‘But your father?’ said the Countess, full of sympathy, for she liked the girl better and better for all that she saw or heard of her. Ethel smiled somewhat sadly. Mr Gray, it appeared, seldom wrote, and then very curtly, from Australia. For nearly two years the customary remittance, sufficient to defray the cost of his daughter’s maintenance, had not reached Sandston. That he would one day come back to England, Ethel hoped. He had been, she feared, of late less prosperous in his affairs than was formerly the case. Dr Keating held the address in Sydney to which letters to the widower had been hitherto addressed.
The matter was settled; the proposal that Ethel should become governess to Lady Alice, and as such should be permanently domiciled at High Tor, was graciously made and gratefully accepted.
‘I shall have to look out for another schoolmistress, it seems,’ said the good-natured old Earl; ‘but never mind that. Alice is pleased, and Maud is pleased; and as Miss Gray seems to like it too, I think we may say that some good came of our luckless fire, after all.’
SOME PHYSIOLOGICAL ERRORS.
One of the notable examples of popular delusions regarding bodily structure and functions, is exemplified by the belief that the third finger was selected as the bearer of the wedding-ring because a particular nerve placed this member in direct communication with the heart. Over and over again has this belief been expressed, and in the belief is found an apparently satisfactory reason why the third finger is thus honoured. The slightest acquaintance with physiological science shews that the supposition referred to has not even a germ of probability to shew on its behalf. The ring-finger is supplied with nerves according to the rule of nervous supply in the body generally, and, it need hardly be said, without the slightest reference to the heart; the nerves of which in turn are supplied from an independent source and one quite dissociated from that which supplies the nerves of the hand.
Equally curious and erroneous beliefs intrude themselves into the domain of medicine and surgery. Thus for instance it is a matter of ordinary belief that a cut in the space which separates the thumb from the forefinger is of necessity a most dangerous injury. The popular notion regarding this region is that an injury inflicted thereupon is singularly liable to be followed by tetanus or lock-jaw. There exist not the slightest grounds for this supposition. Lock-jaw it is true might follow an injury to this part of the hand, as it might supervene after a wound of any of the fingers. But physiology and medicine alike emphatically dispel the idea that any peculiarity of structure which might predispose to the affection just named, exists chiefly in the region of the thumb. It may be that the difficulty experienced in securing the healing of wounds in this portion of the hand—owing to the amount of loose tissue and to the free movements of the part which it is almost impossible to prevent—might favour or predispose to an attack of tetanus. But as the same remark may be made of many other portions of the body, it follows that the thumb-region possesses no peculiarity whatever in this respect over any other part of the frame.
One of the points which has been most hotly contested in technical as well as in popular physiology is the use and functions of the spleen. This organ, as most readers are aware, is a gland, of somewhat oval shape, lying close to the left side or extremity of the stomach. It is one of the so-called ‘ductless’ glands of the body—that is, it possesses no duct or outlet, as do the liver, sweetbread, and other glands concerned with the formation of special fluids used in digestion and other functions. In olden times philosophers puzzled themselves over this mysterious organ; nor was its nature rendered any clearer by the discovery of the fact that it may be removed from the bodies of the higher animals without causing any great or subsequent inconvenience, and without affecting in any perceptible degree the health of the subject operated upon. One classical authority went so far as to allege that he could find no use whatever for the organ; whilst another maintained that possibly it was intended to serve as a kind of packing for the other organs around it, and that it kept them from getting out of their places in the movements of the body. The idea, however, which obtained most credence was that which regarded the spleen as the fountain and origin of all the vile ‘humours’ which rankled the blood and soured the disposition of man. We can still trace in the metaphorical expressions of our literature this ancient belief; so that what at first were regarded as literal and true ideas of the spleen and its use, have come in modern days to do duty simply as metaphors.