s. He was not so much interested in surgery as in medicine, which, a
more empirical science, offered greater scope to the imagination. The work
was a little harder than the corresponding work on the medical side. There
was a lecture from nine till ten, when he went into the wards; there
wounds had to be dressed, stitches taken out, bandages renewed: Philip
prided himself a little on his skill in bandaging, and it amused him to
wring a word of approval from a nurse. On certain afternoons in the week
there were operations; and he stood in the well of the theatre, in a white
jacket, ready to hand the operating surgeon any instrument he wanted or to
sponge the blood away so that he could see what he was about. When some
rare operation was to be performed the theatre would fill up, but
generally there were not more than half a dozen students present, and then
the proceedings had a cosiness which Philip enjoyed. At that time the
world at large seemed to have a passion for appendicitis, and a good many
cases came to the operating theatre for this complaint: the surgeon for
whom Philip dressed was in friendly rivalry with a colleague as to which
could remove an appendix in the shortest time and with the smallest
incision.

In due course Philip was put on accident duty. The dressers took this in
turn; it lasted three days, during which they lived in hospital and ate
their meals in the common-room; they had a room on the ground floor near
the casualty ward, with a bed that shut up during the day into a cupboard.
The dresser on duty had to be at hand day and night to see to any casualty
that came in. You were on the move all the time, and not more than an hour
or two passed during the night without the clanging of the bell just above
your head which made you leap out of bed instinctively. Saturday night was
of course the busiest time and the closing of the public-houses the
busiest hour. Men would be brought in by the police dead drunk and it
would be necessary to administer a stomach-pump; women, rather the worse
for liquor themselves, would come in with a wound on the head or a
bleeding nose which their husbands had given them: some would vow to have
the law on him, and others, ashamed, would declare that it had been an
accident. What the dresser could manage himself he did, but if there was
anything important he sent for the house-surgeon: he did this with care,
since the house-surgeon was not vastly pleased to be dragged down fi