work pretty much like other professional folks of my
temperament. Thus:

Wrist, if you please.--I was on his right side, but he presented his
left wrist, crossing it over the other.--I begin to count, holding watch
in left hand. One, two, three, four,--What a handsome hand! wonder if
that splendid stone is a carbuncle.--One, two, three, four, five, six,
seven,--Can't see much, it is so dark, except one white object.--One,
two, three, four,--Hang it! eighty or ninety in the minute, I
guess.--Tongue, if you please.--Tongue is put out. Forget to look at it,
or, rather, to take any particular notice of it;--but what is that white
object, with the long arm stretching up as if pointing to the sky,
just as Vesalius and Spigelius and those old fellows used to put their
skeletons? I don't think anything of such objects, you know; but what
should he have it in his chamber for? As I had found his pulse irregular
and intermittent, I took out a stethoscope, which is a pocket-spyglass
for looking into people's chests with your ears, and laid it over the
place where the heart beats. I missed the usual beat of the organ.--How
is this?--I said,--where is your heart gone to?--He took the stethoscope
and shifted it across to the right side; there was a displacement of the
organ.--I am ill-packed,--he said;--there was no room for my heart in
its place as it is with other men.--God help him!

It is hard to draw the line between scientific curiosity and the desire
for the patient's sake to learn all the details of his condition. I must
look at this patient's chest, and thump it and listen to it. For this is
a case of ectopia cordis, my boy,--displacement of the heart; and it
is n't every day you get a chance to overhaul such an interesting
malformation. And so I managed to do my duty and satisfy my curiosity
at the same time. The torso was slight and deformed; the right arm
attenuated,--the left full, round, and of perfect symmetry. It had
run away with the life of the other limbs,--a common trick enough of
Nature's, as I told you before. If you see a man with legs withered from
childhood, keep out of the way of his arms, if you have a quarrel with
him. He has the strength of four limbs in two; and if he strikes you, it
is an arm-blow plus a kick administered from the shoulder instead of the
haunch, where it should have started from.

Still examining him as a patient, I kept my eyes about me to search
all parts of the chamber and went on w