St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student

You care not for your loss; we calculate our gain.

    – Browning.

Our doctor was now given wholly to the material side of his work. Young men are an imitative order of beings, loving smartness, and desiring to be in the foremost rank, whether in sports or study. The men of the hospital found there was no road to distinction at St. Bernard’s except that of novelty. There was nothing to be done on the old lines; to stay there was to be content with the dead level of mediocrity. This section of the school scoffed at religion, held faith to be a mark of imperfect development; and in proportion as they grew more in the sort of knowledge they thought it the proper thing to acquire, learned to despise everything which of old had served to make the world wise and good. Elsworth, for some time, kept himself aloof from this set, but his abilities and his rising ambition made him a man to be competed for and flattered. Gradually he became puffed up with a sense of the importance of the things he had acquired. So far from thinking himself, with Newton, a child on the sea-shore picking up shells of truth, he fancied he was doing business in the deep waters, though he was only stumbling amongst rocks. When this state of mind is reached, the man becomes selfish and indifferent to the condition of his fellow-men, and as God becomes a vanishing point Self looms large. All the virtues were to these men mere conventionalities, and it was as absurd not to live for one’s own advancement as for a giraffe to contravene the law of his nature pressing him to crop the highest branches he could reach with an increasing length of neck. So they craved after the best within their reach, regardless of the poor wretches below them who had not learned how to put forth their powers.

A purely scientific education has a tendency in the minds of the young to produce this selfishness, and the wisdom of our forefathers is shown in their having made the masterpieces of ancient literature the great pièces de résistance of the mental provender which they provided for their alumni, because Literature ennobles and subdues Self, and inspires with great and generous thoughts as does no other human learning.

The hospital education of the present day is mere craftsmanship, and should only be permitted in conjunction with a liberal university training. The man who knows medicine and surgery only, however well he may know both, has only half learned the business of a doctor.

The old custom of serving an apprenticeship to a general practitioner had many advantages. Hospital work is so different from that in the outer world in which the student will have to practise, that he is only half educated when his curriculum is finished, and his diploma obtained. One acquires a certain wholesale business air in dealing with patients while attending the hospitals which is particularly objectionable to patients in general; and till a man has had considerable contact with private patients, he is far too rough and ready in the sick-room to be very welcome there. Our every-day complaints, it is evident, do not particularly interest him. He has been dealing with “cases as is cases; none of your trumpery family doctor business,” as Podger said. He has no respect for the miserable creature who has only bruised himself, not fractured anything; or whose mind is disturbed by family troubles and so misses his sleep, instead of being the subject of the vastly more interesting cerebral disease. In the latter case there is something pretty for his ophthalmoscope; in the former your eyes are not worth looking at. He has got hold of the notion that there can be nothing at all the matter with you if you have no “physical signs.” For your true scientist rejects the imagination. He wants facts he can handle and see. At heart he is a mere mechanic; he must open the frog’s thorax, and actually see the heart beating; must see with his own eyes the way carbonic acid acts on the living blood corpuscle. When completely imbued with this spirit, as the human mind can only entertain one great idea at a time, he acquires a sovereign contempt for the men who imagine merely, and do not see, taste, handle, and feel.

Linda had given herself up to the Socialist propaganda, and had quite resolved to waste no part of her life in love affairs. “It was quite time,” she declared, “that women should begin the work of setting to rights a world that men had so grievously muddled up.” She had often said more unwise things than this. She was, moreover, quite sincere, and had refused several very eligible offers for her hand. A bright-eyed, graceful woman like Linda, with her undoubted intellectual powers and her nice little fortune, would naturally have had offers before she reached her twenty-eighth year; but she loved the new gospel, and honestly thought it her duty “to war against the Jahveh worship introduced by a tribe of wandering Semites, and to substitute the evangel of Humanity for the code of Sinai.” There are plenty of such people about. It is not only the followers of Christ who sacrifice their lives and substance for their faith; His enemies do that, and do it honestly enough in their way. Were these people enemies of Christ? They did not think so. They maintained that the greatest Socialist who ever lived was Jesus of Nazareth, that He would have really conquered the world had not the Church conquered Him.

Elsworth was not in love with Linda in any true sense. He was attracted towards her by her brilliancy, wit, and mental powers. She was not beautiful if you analysed her form and features, – not one of the latter would have passed muster with an artist; yet, taken altogether, with intellect and grace beaming from her eyes, and influencing every movement, she was just the woman a clever man would fall in love with while in her presence. But this love would not last long. Clever men are usually held in bondage by coarser fetters than those of intellect. Girton or Newham are not at all the places one would go to for the purpose of seeking a wife: they can want no very high walls at either to keep Romeo out. As this is not a love story, we do not propose to analyse very minutely the sentiments that drew these young people towards each other. Perhaps it is quite enough to say that Elsworth was attracted by the very efforts she used to demolish the principles he had brought to his hospital career. He felt that Christianity was not intellectual enough for Western notions, however, it might include the highest modern ideas of philanthropy. In face of that young girl and her brother, he lacked the courage to take upon him the offence of the Cross. Peter denied his master at a maid-servant’s question. Linda had vanquished our young surgeon’s faith.

The athlete glories in his strength, the boisterous health of a well-knit frame requires an outlet; hence the periodical rowdyism which attacks students everywhere, especially those in training for callings that will repress their ardents spirits all too soon. With Tom Lennard and little Murphy, Elsworth was now almost nightly engaged in some wild frolic or other. A curious mixture was in him – half hero, half imp; at times he was given to periods of deep meditation on the highest matters that can interest mankind, to speculation on questions which have agitated the minds of philosophers, with a deep under-current of poetry running through his soul. Yet with all this there was a surface hot-headed foolishness which he neglected to restrain, leading him, at the suggestion of the moment, into outrageous acts of purposeless folly, if fun could be extracted from it. He wanted one thing —

“Discrimination – nicer power man needs
To rule him than is bred of bone and thew.”

Ever some new madness was attempted, some scandal enacted. The favourite amusement just then was disturbing music-halls and theatres, bar-rooms, and supper places in the West. The public seemed rather to like the students’ riots, and the proprietors condoned for money compensation what the police were only too anxious to punish.

One proprietor of a large and popular place of amusement did not see these disturbances in just this amiable light, and had recently caught and punished several young medicos who had made themselves obnoxious to him. It was determined very secretly to combine the fighting men of several hospitals into one grand attack on this man’s property.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE LOST LEADER

Well, he is gone, and with him go these thoughts.

    – Shakespeare.

Meantime, how much I loved him,
I find out now I’ve lost him.

    – Browning.

It was the 9th of November, and Lord Mayor’s Show day – a festival of the first class at all the medical schools of the metropolis. On great occasions like this, the spirits of all medicos run high. They drink deeply, sally forth with knobby sticks, and prepare for multiform scrimmages. On this particular day word had been sent round to all the medical schools that a raid was to be made on the “Frivolity” Music Hall, Oxford Street, and Medicine expected every hospital man to do his duty. The rendezvous was at Piccadilly Circus, the time ten o’clock. At the appointed hour the locality was crowded with active, healthy young fellows, armed with their characteristic bludgeons; and the word was quickly passed to link arms and rush up Regent Street, driving everybody before them. No sooner suggested than done; right across the street they formed, from house-front to house-front, in triple rows. Of course everybody got out of their way, and gave a wide berth to them, and the young clerks and shopmen, who were delighted to join in the spree, and willing to undergo the indignity of being arrested for the pleasure of being suspected and perhaps described in the papers as medical students. As it is not the cowl that makes the monk, these vain persons do not always deceive either the public or the magistrates before whom they appear. The music hall was quickly reached, with little interference on the part of the police who had not previously got notice of the raid. The turnstiles were upset or broken down, the money-takers roughly handled, and the spacious “hall of splendour and realm of dazzling light,” as one of the fellows called it, was taken by storm; the glasses and crockery at the refreshment bars were smashed, the looking-glass on the walls demolished, the marble tables overthrown, and the unfortunate portion of the audience, which did not succeed in escaping, soon had cause to regret the excessive demonstrativeness of the followers of medicine. Of course, when the place was half wrecked, the police came in force, and restored order. Some half-dozen of the rioters were arrested, and duly appeared before the magistrate, received their lecture on the manner they disgraced their noble calling, and were let off with fines. But the event of the night was the disappearance of Elsworth. No one knew what had become of him; he was not among the arrested, nor had he turned up at the hospital or his lodgings. No one had seen him after the row at the “Frivolity,” and all sorts of alarming rumours began to circulate as to his absence. He was last remembered in the heat of battle in the music hall, rallying his forces, crying, “St. Bernard’s to the rescue!” when the police had captured one of his heroes. After that no one saw him more. Had he met with an accident? Had he been attacked and robbed, and then killed by some of the bad characters in Seven Dials close by? No one could say. A week passed, and though inquiries had been made at every possible place, and all his friends communicated with, nothing whatever could be heard of him. The fellows began to rake up every bit of his conversation they could recollect. As we have already narrated, at Oxford he was deeply religious, but his medical studies had imbued him with serious doubts on all the distinctive dogmas of Christianity, till at last the atmosphere of the dissecting-room and the physiological laboratory seemed to have weakened his faith in God, the soul, and the future life. It was the fact that this state of things often obtained at St Bernard’s. All its professors but one or two were agnostics, or even atheists. Some were serious, thoughtful men, who grieved they could not believe; while others, as far as they dared, made a jest of the most sacred themes. Young men – and especially young medical men – are prone to copy very closely the speech and the modes of thought of those who are in authority over them, and the school took its tone from the many brilliant men of science on its teaching staff. The microscope, the test-tube, and the scalpel had dissipated much of young Elsworth’s faith, and he had not cared to conceal it. Had he committed suicide? Why should he? He was not embarrassed; he had ample means and wealthy friends. Nor was he involved in any intrigues, as far as could be known; and as he was of the liveliest and most optimistic turn of mind, the idea was scouted by those who knew him best.

CHAPTER XVIII.

AN EPICURE OF PAIN

I pity the unfortunate who, in their necessities, find only the succour of the civil authorities, without the intervention of Christian charity. In reports presented to the public, philanthropy may and will exaggerate the care which it lavishes on the unfortunate, but things will not be so in reality.

    – Balmez.

He loves not to be prodigal of men’s lives, but thriftily improves the objects of his cruelty, spending them by degrees, and epicurizing on their pain.

    – Thos. Fuller.

The institution and maintenance of such public charities as hospitals for the gratuitous relief of sickness all over Europe are directly due to Christianity; no other religion or policy, except Buddhism in its prime, ever blessed the world with such a form of charity. It has become a recognised idea in our day that a poor sick man has a right to be restored to health at the hands of a Christian people. That there are misuses of it is well known, many persons seeking to participate in this benevolence who could afford to obtain medical aid at their own expense; yet the public is so convinced that at any cost it is bound to remove the burden of illness from the shoulders of the poor, that it is ready to wink at the abuse of its kindness in this way. The physicians and surgeons attached to the greater hospitals are much sought after by very well-to-do, not to say opulent, persons, who use every mean device to obtain consultations gratuitously. Many such persons have been known to attire themselves in the clothes of their servants, and to send their children in charge of their cooks, to obtain advice and medicine which would have entailed expense if obtained privately. This is one of the ways in which such institutions are robbed.

It is possible that the treatment of the ills to which humanity is subject may in course of time be considerably improved, in consequence of the patient investigation that has long been carried out on every form of disease at our hospitals. At present physiology and pathology so entirely occupy the attention of the doctors, that treatment is relegated to the distant future. A French physician spoke the truth when he said, “The object of the scientific practitioner is to make a good diagnosis in life, and then verify it on the post-mortem table.” It is not to be denied that the art of making a good diagnosis has been brought to considerable perfection of late; but whether we are more successful than the doctors of former times in curing these well-diagnosed diseases is very doubtful. Now a general hospital, frequented by thousands of “cases,” is to the inquiring physician what an Alpine valley is to the botanist, or a Brazilian forest to an entomologist. It is there that orders, genera, and species are to be found. Diseases for classification in all their variations are met with amongst the crowds applying for treatment. The great object is to get the crowds; they come for one thing, the doctors for another. Very good and kind and clever at curing folk, no doubt they often are, but primarily the object of calling the crowd together is precisely that which the herbarium supplies to the botanist, and the nest of drawers to the entomologist.

The hospital professor is like Linnæus, who so curiously expressed himself when he had achieved success: —

“God hath so led me, that what I desired and could not attain has been my greatest blessing;

“God hath given me interesting and honourable service, yea! that which in all the world I most desired;

“He hath lifted me up among the mæcenates scientiarum, yea! among the princes of the kingdom, and into the King’s house;

“He hath lent me the largest herbarium in the world, my best delight.

“He hath honoured me with the honorary title of arkiater, with the star of a knight, with the shield of a nobleman, and with a name in the world of letters, etc.”

The only difference being that the great botanist thanked God for his herbarium, while our hospital man of science has generally little thought of God when making up his case book, unless it be to think, with Helmholtz, how much more perfect organs he could have devised had he been consulted at creation.

Elsworth often thought that all their diagnosis and classification did little for the cure of disease; and that, as the labourer said of his landlord’s claret, “You didn’t get any forrarder with it all!”

“Some day we shall arrive at the treatment stage,” they said; “at present all is chaos in that direction. We have not diagnosed enough,” they urge. “We must diagnose a good deal more in every part of the world; then meet in congress, then keep up discussion in a hundred societies, and, in the course of a century or so, we may begin to try to cure people; but it is too early yet. Meanwhile, we can diagnose. And take our fees? Why, certainly!”

Mr. Crowe was lecturer on physiology and pathology; that is to say, he taught the students what the human body is in its normal state, and what happened to it when subject to disease. He claimed that the only gate to the true knowledge of a doctor’s work was the branch of science which formed his speciality; and, as the examiners seemed to take the same view, Mr. Crowe occupied a considerable share of the students’ time and attention. St. Bernard’s made a great fuss with Mr. Crowe, and grudged no expenditure on his department. He could have all sorts of costly and curious apparatus on application, because, in the present rage for experiment, it was found to pay. He had a beautiful laboratory for his work in the medical school, and in the hospital, fine new chambers attached to the post-mortem room, where he kept his microscopes, and made sections with the utmost patience and skill. Here he often spent whole nights alone; here it was more than rumoured the most gruesome things went on in secret, for, in the vaults below, there was a small menagerie. No one was supposed to have access to this inquisition-chamber, except he was either in Mr. Crowe’s employ, or in his completest confidence, for of late unpleasant discussions had taken place, and the subscribing public had made it pretty well known that they did not support St. Bernard’s for this sort of work. Thus, great care had to be exercised, and all Mr. Crowe’s familiars were cautioned to mind what they were about. The tabbies and the lap-dogs of the neighbourhood could venture abroad with less danger of being pressed for service at St. Bernard’s, and the porters had to go to Seven Dials for their purchases. These porters were characters in their way. Long service in this line of business had left its marks upon them. They were scarred and furrowed about the hands and arms with bites, cuts, and scratches, which had healed badly, and, to the skilled observer, sufficiently stamped them with the trade mark of the hospital. They were brutalized by their ghoul-like work, and, if given the opportunity of doing a stroke of business, would stick at nothing in the way of subjects, which did not actually jeopardize their necks.

Mr. Crowe was forty-two years old, of middle height, dark, and inclined to leanness. He had a decidedly malevolent aspect. His face was not that of the libertine, the schemer, or the man of pleasure; but a perfect pitilessness, an utter dissociation from any genial or loving characteristics, was boldly recorded on the lines of his face, and the very carriage of his body. Hard was not the word for it, cruel was not wide enough to comprehend his character. Disregard of all pain in others, contempt for those who professed to care for what troubled others; these were the distinguishing traits of Mr. Malthus Crowe’s moral character, and his face advertised it. Mr Crowe was rapidly becoming an authority in his branches of science, and accordingly brought much kudos to St. Bernard’s. Had not physiology been invented in these latter days, it is difficult to imagine what the world could have done for Mr. Crowe. He loved pain; he reverenced and esteemed it (in others, of course). He had inflicted it in every form, and watched its effects learnedly without flinching, both in animals and man. He always described it as a tonic – Nature’s great nerve bracer – but he never took it himself if he could help it. He declared the world could not get on without it.

He had married in early life the daughter of an Italian engineer, who lived at Cernobbio, on Lake Como. Having been in the habit of taking his long vacation tour in Switzerland and Italy, he had formed the acquaintance of several hospital surgeons of kindred tastes to his own, and had frequently visited them at Milan and Genoa, and compared notes on matters of mutual interest. One of these confrères had introduced him to his family, and so he met Olympia Casatelli, and, having some reason to think her prospects good, had married her, notwithstanding she was a Catholic, though her pronounced Garibaldian sentiments had left her without any very ardent attachment to the religion of her baptism.

Olympia was deeply imbued with the new Italian patriotism, and cordially detested the “rule of the monk.” Passionate in her love for her country, she eagerly caught at Mr. Crowe’s atheistic and revolutionary notions, and, repellent as he appeared to most women, he succeeded in winning her love, more by his professed sympathy with the cause of Italian independence, and his hatred of the Bourbon and Austrian, than by his own personal attractions. Downright ugliness in a clever man is often an additional attraction, even to a handsome woman; and Mr. Crowe’s science and revolutionary sympathies found their way to Olympia’s heart, during an autumn holiday he passed at the lakes. She must have loved him very much, or thought she did, or she could never have torn herself away from the beloved mountains and the blissful lake to bury herself in a wilderness of brick in the heart of London. However, she had not been married a year ere she began to pine for her picturesque home by the waterfall in the midst of the vineyard at Cernobbio.

She soon found that her husband’s interest in Italy was merely that of a destroyer – he cared only to upset the old order of things everywhere, loved anarchy for the sake of pulling down something venerated by Christian folk, and was insusceptible of sympathy with patriotism. Soon poor Olympia was disillusioned; her husband was absorbed so completely in his unpleasant branch of science, that she had little of his company, and gradually was entirely neglected. She had few friends in London, and none of the resources that would have helped an Englishwoman similarly situated. It was not long before Mr. Crowe threw off his mask. He cared for her less even than he cared for her country: it was plain that he had married for money, and had not realized his expectations. Working as he was doing for European fame, engaged in researches which could only indirectly bring him reward, it was irksome in the extreme for him to have to devote valuable time to patients and pupils, for the sake of earning a living. He had trusted to a good marriage to liberate him from these necessities. Never a very ardent lover, he showed disgust when his neglected wife sought a miserable refuge from her grief in narcotics. She gradually neglected her personal appearance, and declined her food, occupying herself with painting and music, but not sufficiently to absorb herself in these pursuits; she slowly wasted, and ultimately lost her health completely. Then her sleep forsook her, and she took chloral by her husband’s suggestion. Its fascination held her in a bondage, from which she had no sufficient energy to escape, and in mind and body the beautiful Olympia, so recently the flower of her mountain home, became a wreck, Her very presence soon became an annoyance to her husband, and for days together he would absent himself from the house. She was so irksome to him, that had he any deity in his pantheon who could have assisted him, he would have prayed for her death. The sole deity he acknowledged was the one who only helps those who help themselves; and at times a dark thought occurred to him that some day he should be compelled to come to his own assistance – the methods of carrying out such an idea were all too easy and too safe for a man with his knowledge and in his position.

CHAPTER XIX.

AN APT PUPIL

Gentle friends,
Let’s kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;
Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Now hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.

    – Shakespeare.

I hold that we should only affect compassion, and carefully avoid having any; it is a passion that is perfectly useless in a well-constituted mind, serving but to weaken the heart, and being only fit for common people, who, never acting by the rules of reason, are in want of passions to stimulate them to action.

    – La Rochefoucauld.

Walter Mole was assistant to Mr. Crowe in his laboratory. He was twenty two years of age when he entered St. Bernard’s. He was the youngest son of a speculative builder in the West of England, who having made a fortune by erecting many streets of stucco-fronted villa residences (built on ground the gravel of which he had dug out and sold and replaced with the contents of the dust-bins of the town), was ambitious to settle his sons in life in the learned professions. He tried hard to make his eldest a clergyman, but as he lacked the ability even to conceal his evil habits, he sank back to the gutter from which it was impossible to raise him, and followed the entirely congenial calling of a billiard marker. The aspiring parent still determining to make capital out of evil and unpleasant things, sent his smart, pushing little cad of a son Walter to St. Bernard’s, to bring honour to the family name as a surgeon. Mr. Walter Mole was a very diminutive specimen of humanity, making up however in conceit, as is often the case, what he lacked in inches. Mr. Mole was a young man of aspirations. Sharp at his books, he had done so well at the cheap boarding school where he had got his education, that he had no difficulty in passing the examination in arts required by the very moderate ideas of the Apothecaries’ Society of London. By industry and a plodding perseverance, combined with an intense desire to elevate himself in the social ladder, he ingratiated himself in the favour of the Professor of Anatomy, who made him a “demonstrator,” a kind of anatomical pupil teacher. He won the scholarship in anatomy and physiology; by constant practice he acquired a nice dexterity with his fingers, and his dissections were so accurate and careful that many of them were honoured with places in the college museum. Now Mr. Mole, although popular with the lecturers, was detested by the men. He was, in the first place, not a gentleman; everything he said or did proclaimed him “Cad.” His oily hair, and still more oily tongue; his dirty finger-nails and dirtier ideas; his paper collars and imitation jewellery; his low money-grubbing propensities; his scheming cunning to win the favour of those who could help him, and his insolent contempt of those whom he considered to be beneath him in position, made him detested by the men of the school who were unfortunate enough to have to associate with him. To thrash him was of no use. Who could fight such a contemptible object? So all sorts of tricks were played upon him, which he resented in his own way; and as he had much influence with the authorities, his resentment was not always to be despised. As he did a good deal of money-lending at exorbitant interest, he was always able to secure the favour of the very considerable section of the men who were in his debt. Such a man can always hold his own, and Mr. Mole held his at St. Bernard’s, and was not to be put down. If popular dislike could exterminate – say – toads, how few would be left! And as toads must have some use in the economy of nature, there is no knowing what disarrangements of her plans their disappearance might effect. There was possibly some use for Mr. Mole, or “Molly Cular,” as he was usually called. He acquired this epithet from a mispronunciation in his early days at the hospital of the term “molecular,” and the nickname stuck to him even when he became house surgeon. His eye was as quick as his hands were dexterous, and as Jack Murphy used to say, “Mole was cut out for a pick-pocket, but spoiled in the making.” When assisting the lecturers he never failed to detect the larking student who was causing all the uproar, and many were the men who lost marks and favour by the watchful supervision of Demonstrator Mole. His sensitiveness to ridicule served to improve his taste, and he gradually acquired correctness of pronunciation and much general knowledge from sheer dread of the suffering he would have to undergo if caught in the slightest mistake. He had endured so much for dropping his h’s that he fell into the opposite error of a too liberal use of the aspirate. He so economized the truth that he never used it unnecessarily, and was as sparing of it as of his money, though probably not for the same reasons. Of course he scoffed at religion as something beneath the notice of an advanced scientist, and was never more in his element than when shocking some pious pupil by a coarse joke twisted out of Biblical language, or a metaphor which was perverted from a sacred subject. His familiarity with Holy Writ enabled him to shock a great many good people, and amuse some evil ones; but even they were few, as it is rightly considered the mark of a vulgar mind to make fun of any man’s faith. This habit ultimately caused complaints to be made of him to the college board, and he was cautioned that he must abandon it if he expected advancement. Hating religion, which was a constant rebuke to all he loved best, he threw himself with renewed zest into the pursuit of science, which was too cold to reproach him with anything, and he determined to win respect for services rendered to physiology which he could scarcely hope could be conceded for anything else within his reach. He was not loved; he determined to be respected. Soon he found his opportunity. A skilful and patient worker at the microscope, he earned much favour and profit from Mr. Crowe by his admirable pathological work. Many thousands of beautiful sections and other objects in the microscope room were the result of Mr. Mole’s deft labours in this direction. He became indispensable in the physiological room, and the constant attendant on the researches of his master. There was a common sentiment which drew these men together. Both feeling that the world did not love them for themselves sought to compel admiration for their achievements. Both were essentially cruel at heart; both would not only have gladly botanized on their mother’s graves to discover anything to win them credit, but would have learned with pleasure anything they could from the sufferings of their dearest relations. Mr. Mole took care that his chief never ran short of dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, or frogs, for use at the tables and troughs. To show his devotion to this work he even gave up a worn-out retriever which had saved his life a few years before by arousing him from sleep when his chamber was on fire. What greater proof of devotion to one’s work could be demanded than this? But he would have done even more to win favour with Mr. Crowe. Had he not been introduced by him with high encomiums to several learned medical societies, and had not his early attempts at writing for the scientific journals been aided by his counsel? Such a friend was worth a dog or two. He laboured at first, above all things, to win Mr. Crowe’s favour; then, as the work began to be familiar, he embraced it with an ever-increasing love. It did not give Mr. Mole much difficulty to rid himself of the outside prejudice against causing needless suffering to sentient beings, though when he first began, it was not with the “true spirit of the artist” that he approached his work. But this came in time, and now not alone on Mr. Crowe’s account, but for its own sake, this laboratory business took hold of every fibre of his being. He revelled in it; he spent in it his nights as well as his days. His Sundays were specially devoted to the more private, revolting, and awful exercises which Mr. Crowe would only share with priests of the inner temple of science. Here one vied with another who could do the most startling things, who could invent newer forms of torture.