erform the day's
operations.

Usually, patients are operated on the same day that they are
admitted. If this were not done, not only would the wards become
hopelessly congested, but in many cases the courage of the patients
would ooze out of their fingers' ends, and, instead of finding them
ready for the ordeal, one would be greeted by "I have just heard that
my father has been taken seriously ill. If I do not go home at once,
I shall never see him again." Another: "I quite forgot to arrange
for my donkey to get hay during my absence. I will go home and make
arrangements for it, and return in two days." Of course, one knows
that these stories are pure fabrications, but it would be useless to
tell them so, or to argue; one can only return them their own clothes,
take back the hospital linen, and let them go. Sometimes they come
back later on, and tell more fibs about their father or their donkey
in justification of themselves; more often they are not seen again.

While the operation cases are being prepared by the house-surgeon,
the doctor goes the round of the wards, examining, prescribing, and
saying words of cheer from bed to bed. This done, he is just about
to commence operations, when a man comes running up to say that his
brother was out shooting when his gun exploded, blowing off his hand;
would the doctor see him at once lest he bled to death? and close
behind him is the wounded man brought up on a bed. The doctor examines
him, sets a dresser to apply a temporary dressing, and perhaps a
tourniquet, so that the case may safely wait till the conclusion of
the other operations.

The operation cases to-day are representative of an average day in
the busy time of the year: they begin with five old men and three
women suffering from cataract, then two cases of incurved lids,
then an amputation, the removal of a tumour, and two cases of bone
disease. These over, the man with the injured hand is chloroformed
and the wound stitched up, except for two fingers, which were so
damaged that they had to be removed altogether.

The schoolboys are out now in the field playing football, and the
doctor, after refreshing himself with a cup of tea, thinks that nothing
would be more invigorating than a good hour's exercise with them; but
he has scarcely got his togs on before the servant comes to announce
that a certain big malik, or chief, has come to make a call. One would
like to put him off with an excuse for a more convenien