incidents.

CHAPTER IV

AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL

I have never ceased to regret that there was not more corporate life
in our medical school, but I believe that conditions have been greatly
improved since my day. Here and there two or three classmates would
"dig" together, but otherwise, except at lectures or in hospitals, we
seldom met unless it was on the athletic teams. We had no playground
of our own, and so, unable to get other hospitals to combine, when a
now famous St. Thomas man and myself hired part of the justly
celebrated London Rowing Club Headquarters at Putney for a united
hospitals' headquarters, we used to take our blazers and more
cherished possessions home with us at night for fear of distraint of
rent.

They were great days. Rowing on the Thames about Putney is not like
that at Oxford on a mill-pond, or as at Cambridge on what we nicknamed
a drain that should be roofed over. Its turgid waters were often rough
enough to sink a rowing shell, and its busy traffic was a thing with
which to reckon. But it offered associations with all kinds of
interesting places, historical and otherwise, from the Star and Garter
at Richmond and the famous Park away to Boulter's Lock and Cleveden
Woods, to the bathing pools about Taplow Court, the seat of the senior
branch of our family, and to Marlow and Goring where our annual club
outings were held. Twice I rowed in the inter-hospital race from
Putney to Mortlake, once as bow and again as stroke. During those
early days the "London" frequently had the best boat on the river.

Having now finished my second year at hospital and taken my
preliminary examinations, including the scientific preliminary, and my
first bachelor of medicine for the University of London degree, I had
advanced to the dignity of "walking the hospitals," carried a large
shining stethoscope, and spent much time following the famous
physicians and surgeons around the wards.

Our first appointment was clerking in the medical wards. We had each
so many beds allotted to us, and it was our business to know
everything about the patients who occupied them, to keep accurate
"histories" of all developments, and to be ready to be quizzed and
queried by our resident house physician, or our visiting consultant on
the afternoon when he made his rounds, followed by larger or smaller
crowds of students according to the value which was placed upon his
teaching. I was lucky enough to work under the famou