was a very distinguished young officer of artillery, had come in to
consult me. My pen was wet to sign the paper when I discovered it,"
says Dr. Manson, mopping his forehead.

"We were talking about nerve just now," observes the surgeon. "Just
after my qualifying I served in the Navy for a time, as I think you
know. I was on the flag-ship on the West African Station, and I
remember a singular example of nerve which came to my notice at that
time. One of our small gunboats had gone up the Calabar river, and
while there the surgeon died of coast fever. On the same day a man's
leg was broken by a spar falling upon it, and it became quite obvious
that it must be taken off above the knee if his life was to be saved.
The young lieutenant who was in charge of the craft searched among the
dead doctor's effects and laid his hands upon some chloroform, a
hip-joint knife, and a volume of Grey's Anatomy. He had the man laid
by the steward upon the cabin table, and with a picture of a cross
section of the thigh in front of him he began to take off the limb.
Every now and then, referring to the diagram, he would say: 'Stand by
with the lashings, steward. There's blood on the chart about here.'
Then he would jab with his knife until he cut the artery, and he and
his assistant would tie it up before they went any further. In this
way they gradually whittled the leg off, and upon my word they made a
very excellent job of it. The man is hopping about the Portsmouth Hard
at this day.

"It's no joke when the doctor of one of these isolated gunboats himself
falls ill," continues the surgeon after a pause. "You might think it
easy for him to prescribe for himself, but this fever knocks you down
like a club, and you haven't strength left to brush a mosquito off your
face. I had a touch of it at Lagos, and I know what I am telling you.
But there was a chum of mine who really had a curious experience. The
whole crew gave him up, and, as they had never had a funeral aboard the
ship, they began rehearsing the forms so as to be ready. They thought
that he was unconscious, but he swears he could hear every word that
passed. 'Corpse comin' up the latchway!' cried the Cockney sergeant of
Marines. 'Present harms!' He was so amused, and so indignant too,
that he just made up his mind that he wouldn't be carried through that
hatchway, and he wasn't, either."

"There's no need for fiction in medicine," remarks Foster, "for the
facts w