Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life Story 2 - His First Operation

Arthur Conan Doyle (0:30)

HIS FIRST OPERATION It was the first day of the winter session, and the third year's man was walking with the first year's man. Twelve o'clock was just booming out from the Tron Church. Let me see, said the third year's man. You have never seen an operation? Never. Then this way, please. This is Rutherford's historic bar. A glass of sherry, please, for this gentleman. You are rather sensitive, are you not? My nerves are not very strong, I am afraid. H'm. Another glass of sherry for this gentleman. We are going to an operation now, you know. The novice squared his shoulders and made a gallant attempt to look unconcerned. Nothing very bad, eh? Well, yes, pretty bad. An. an amputation?

No.

It's a bigger affair than that. I think.

I think they must be expecting me at home. There's no sense in funking. If you don't go to-day, you must to-morrow. Better get it over at once.

Feel pretty fit? Oh, yes, all right. The smile was not a success. One more glass of sherry, then. Now come on, or we shall be late. I want you to be well in front. Surely that's not necessary. Oh, it is far better. What a drove of students! There are plenty of new men among them. You can tell them easily enough, can't you? If they were going down to be operated upon themselves, they could not look whiter. I don't think I should look as white. Well, I was just the same myself. But the feeling soon wears off. You see a fellow with a face like plaster, and before the week is out, he is eating his lunch in the dissecting rooms.

I'll tell you all about the case when we get to the theatre. The students were pouring down the sloping street which led to the infirmary, each with his little sheaf of notebooks in his hand. They were pale, frightened lads, fresh from the high schools, and callous old cronics, whose generation had passed on and left them. They swept in an unbroken, tumultuous stream from the University gate to the hospital. The figures and gait of the men were young, but there was little youth in most of their faces.

Some looked as if they ate too little, a few as if they drank too much.

Tall and short, tweed-coated and black, round-shouldered bespeckled and slim, they crowded with clatter of feet and rattle of sticks through the hospital gate. Now and again they thickened into two lines, as the carriage of a surgeon of the staff rolled over the cobblestones between. There's going to be a crowd at Archer's, whispered the senior man, with suppressed excitement. It is grand to see him at work. I've seen him jab all around the aorta until it made me jumpy to watch him. This way and mine the whitewash. They passed under an archway and down a long, stone-flagged corridor, with drab-colored doors on either side, each marked with a number. Some of them were ajar, and the novice glanced into them with tingling nerves. He was reassured to catch a glimpse of cheery fires, lines of white contra-pain beds, and a profusion of colored texts upon the wall. The corridor opened upon a small hall, with a fringe of poorly clad people seated all round upon benches.

A young man, with a pair of scissors stuck like a flower in his buttonhole and a notebook in his hand, was passing from one side to the other, whispering and writing.

Anything good? asked the third-year's man. You should have been here yesterday, said the outpatient clerk, glancing up. We had a regular field day.

A popliteal aneurysm, a collar's fracture, a spina bifida, a tropical abscess, and an elephantiasis. How's that for a single hall? I'm sorry I missed it. But they'll come again, I suppose. What's up with the old gentleman? A broken workman was sitting in the shadow, rocking himself slowly to and fro and groaning. A woman beside him was trying to console him, patting his shoulder with a hand which was spotted over with curious little white blisters. It's a fine carbuncle, said the clerk, with the air of a connoisseur who describes his orchids to one who can appreciate them. It's on his back, and the passage is drawdy. So we must not look at it, must we, Daddy? Panphigus, he said, carelessly, pointing to the woman's disfigured hands. Would you care to stop and take out a metacarpal? No, thank you. We are due at Archer's. Come on. And they rejoined the throng which was hurrying to the theatre of the famous surgeon. The tears of horseshoe benches rising from the floor to the ceiling were already packed, and the novice, as he entered, saw vague curving lines of faces in front of him, and heard the deep buzz of a hundred voices and sounds of laughter from somewhere up above him. His companions spied an opening on the second bench, and they both squeezed into it. This is grand, the senior man whispered. You'll have a rare view of it all. Only a single row of heads intervening between them and the operating table. It was of unpainted steel, plain, strong, and scrupulously clean. A sheet of brown waterproofing covered half of it, and beneath stood a large tin tray full of sawdust. On the further side, in front of the window, there was a board which was strewed with glittering instruments. Four seps, tinecula, saws, canulas, and trocars. A line of knives, with long, thin, delicate blades, lay at one side. Two young men lounged in front of this, one threading needles, the other doing something to a brass coffee-pot-like thing, which hissed out puffs of steam.