As to operations, they are carried on in a special hall, to which the patient is carried; patients never are operated on in the wards.
THE DOCTOR'S VISIT.
The great everyday occurrence in a hospital is the doctor's visit. It begins at about eight A.M., and lasts till eleven. The chef, a term designating the head-physician, examines each sufferer in turn, inquires into his or her state, and dictates prescriptions, which are taken down by an outdoor student. He is also attended by indoor students, other outdoor students, postulants, and auditors. The two latter must have gone through a course of two years' study before they are privileged to walk the hospitals. The postulant is not admitted before he has gone through a special examination, and then becomes an outdoor student. The highest degree under doctor is that of an indoor student; all are, therefore, familiar with medical science excepting the auditor, who, though he may have studied two years in the schools, is but a dilettante—a kind of amateur authorized by the chef to follow him on his rounds with the students. Many even call themselves auditors who slip in unperceived with the crowd. When the head-doctor is followed by all these young men, his cortége is very numerous. There are often as many as fifty in our principal hospitals, seldom less than thirty in the minor ones. Thus, without any amplification of a known fact, a patient has to see about forty strangers round his bed every day. He is operated on in public. Not a line of his features contracted by pain escapes the notice of indifferent spectators; not a motion of his muscles is unheeded. The professor meanwhile develops his medical theories on the living body, studying the "case" with care.
Let us for a moment imagine that your own daughter is lying at the hospital. She is twenty; you have brought her up with all the care and solicitude parents owe to their children; you have often said in her hearing that modesty is the loveliest adornment; that it replaces whatever else is wanting, and can be replaced by nothing. For twenty years, you have watched the growth of her budding virtues; her Christian advancement has been your daily care. Her state now requires she should see an eminent physician once every day. Look into your heart. What is the sensation you feel there at the idea of her being examined by forty or fifty medical students besides?
It is an indignant protest against their attendance.
It is the mission of a priest to be made the confidant of many sorrows; he has to suffer with the sufferer, to mourn with the mourner; and he can state that, of all trials which attend medical treatment in hospitals, there is not one more distasteful than the doctor's visit, especially to women. I appeal to any who have heard patients converse together; I appeal to any brother in the ministry. Is this not the great cause of repugnance for hospitals?
On the other hand, medical science has certain rights; doctors have to go through an apprenticeship, practitioners must follow a course of practice on living beings before they are qualified for operations; it is therefore indispensable that the head-doctor should be followed by disciples, and the height of absurdity to require he should go round the wards alone. It is necessary, likewise, that postulants and students should be present; for it frequently occurs that they are called on to dress wounds during the doctor's absence.
Their attendance is consequently unavoidable; but, this being the case, it is all the more desirable, in the name of female modesty, and in the name of common respect for a needy suffering female, that the presence of noisy auditors should be done away with. They crowd the wards, and learn very little. It should be with medical science as with every other: students ought to have become familiar with the rudiments and theories of their profession before they practice; and a few years in the private schools should be gone through before beginners walk the hospitals. The crowd is perfectly intolerable at the hour of the doctor's visit in our best hospitals, especially at the Cliniques and Charité. This might be remedied by each medical student being bound to keep to one asylum for an allotted space of time, let us say one year, after which he could be removed to another. One of the good effects instantly resulting from this would be that our central city hospitals, instead of being crowded to the neglect of others, would find the number of spectators greatly thinned for the benefit of minor hospitals now forsaken. The great thing in all questions relating to benevolent asylums is to examine whence the stand-point is taken for their consideration. Two principles present themselves: common sense and humanity say that physicians and surgeons are intended for hospitals, not hospitals for physicians and surgeons. Medical science—and here we allude to the materialistic and unsound branch of that science—replies: "By no means. Inconvenience must be tolerated, science and progress go foremost."
Let us manfully, though sadly, give up a share for scientific progress (which is not an imaginary thing); and, on looking into it, let us reflect on the bitterness of that irony which so often leaves us to utter the word equality, coupled with that other word, fraternity, which is just as little understood. Hospitals will not answer the end for which they were instituted until the smallest of those who flee hither to hide their misery and sufferings obtain the same respect, deference, and care lavished on the man who owns a yearly income.