ROUND THE RED LAMP(红灯四周)

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ROUND THE RED LAMP

ROUND THE RED

LAMP

By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

ROUND THE RED LAMP

THE PREFACE.

I quite recognise the force of your objection that an invalid or a

woman in weak health would get no good from stories which attempt to

treat some features of medical life with a certain amount of realism. If

you deal with this life at all, however, and if you are anxious to make your

doctors something more than marionettes, it is quite essential that you

should paint the darker side, since it is that which is principally presented

to the surgeon or physician. He sees many beautiful things, it is true,

fortitude and heroism, love and self-sacrifice; but they are all called forth

(as our nobler qualities are always called forth) by bitter sorrow and trial.

One cannot write of medical life and be merry over it.

Then why write of it, you may ask? If a subject is painful why treat it

at all? I answer that it is the province of fiction to treat painful things as

well as cheerful ones. The story which wiles away a weary hour fulfils

an obviously good purpose, but not more so, I hold, than that which helps

to emphasise the graver side of life. A tale which may startle the reader

out of his usual grooves of thought, and shocks him into seriousness, plays

the part of the alterative and tonic in medicine, bitter to the taste but

bracing in the result. There are a few stories in this little collection which

might have such an effect, and I have so far shared in your feeling that I

have reserved them from serial publication. In book-form the reader can

see that they are medical stories, and can, if he or she be so minded, avoid

them.

Yours very truly,

A. CONAN DOYLE.

P. S.--You ask about the Red Lamp. It is the usual sign of the

general practitioner in England.

ROUND THE RED LAMP

BEHIND THE TIMES.

My first interview with Dr. James Winter was under dramatic

circumstances. It occurred at two in the morning in the bedroom of an

old country house. I kicked him twice on the white waistcoat and

knocked off his gold spectacles, while he with the aid of a female

accomplice stifled my angry cries in a flannel petticoat and thrust me into

a warm bath. I am told that one of my parents, who happened to be

present, remarked in a whisper that there was nothing the matter with my

lungs. I cannot recall how Dr. Winter looked at the time, for I had other

things to think of, but his description of my own appearance is far from

flattering. A fluffy head, a body like a trussed goose, very bandy legs,

and feet with the soles turned inwards--those are the main items which he

can remember.

From this time onwards the epochs of my life were the periodical

assaults which Dr. Winter made upon me. He vaccinated me; he cut me

for an abscess; he blistered me for mumps. It was a world of peace and

he the one dark cloud that threatened. But at last there came a time of

real illness--a time when I lay for months together inside my wickerwork-

basket bed, and then it was that I learned that that hard face could relax,

that those country-made creaking boots could steal very gently to a

bedside, and that that rough voice could thin into a whisper when it spoke

to a sick child.

And now the child is himself a medical man, and yet Dr. Winter is the

same as ever. I can see no change since first I can remember him, save

that perhaps the brindled hair is a trifle whiter, and the huge shoulders a

little more bowed. He is a very tall man, though he loses a couple of

inches from his stoop. That big back of his has curved itself over sick

beds until it has set in that shape. His face is of a walnut brown, and tells

of long winter drives over bleak country roads, with the wind and the rain

in his teeth. It looks smooth at a little distance, but as you approach him

you see that it is shot with innumerable fine wrinkles like a last year's

apple. They are hardly to be seen when he is in repose; but when he

ROUND THE RED LAMP

laughs his face breaks like a starred glass, and you realise then that though

he looks old, he must be older than he looks.

How old that is I could never discover. I have often tried to find out,

and have struck his stream as high up as George IV and even the Regency,

but without ever getting quite to the source. His mind must have been

open to impressions very early, but it must also have closed early, for the

politics of the day have little interest for him, while he is fiercely excited

about questions which are entirely prehistoric. He shakes his head when

he speaks of the first Reform Bill and expresses grave doubts as to its

wisdom, and I have heard him, when he was warmed by a glass of wine,

say bitter things about Robert Peel and his abandoning of the Corn Laws.

The death of that statesman brought the history of England to a definite

close, and Dr. Winter refers to everything which had happened since then

as to an insignificant anticlimax.

But it was only when I had myself become a medical man that I was

able to appreciate how entirely he is a survival of a past generation. He

had learned his medicine under that obsolete and forgotten system by

which a youth was apprenticed to a surgeon, in the days when the study of

anatomy was often approached through a violated grave. His views upon

his own profession are even more reactionary than in politics. Fifty years

have brought him little and deprived him of less. Vaccination was well

within the teaching of his youth, though I think he has a secret preference

for inoculation. Bleeding he would practise freely but for public opinion.

Chloroform he regards as a dangerous innovation, and he always clicks

with his tongue when it is mentioned. He has even been known to say

vain things about Laennec, and to refer to the stethoscope as "a new-

fangled French toy." He carries one in his hat out of deference to the

expectations of his patients, but he is very hard of hearing, so that it makes

little difference whether he uses it or not.

He reads, as a duty, his weekly medical paper, so that he has a general

idea as to the advance of modern science. He always persists in looking

upon it as a huge and rather ludicrous experiment. The germ theory of

disease set him chuckling for a long time, and his favourite joke in the sick

room was to say, "Shut the door or the germs will be getting in." As to

ROUND THE RED LAMP

the Darwinian theory, it struck him as being the crowning joke of the

century. "The children in the nursery and the ancestors in the stable," he

would cry, and laugh the tears out of his eyes.

He is so very much behind the day that occasionally, as things move

round in their usual circle, he finds himself, to his bewilderment, in the

front of the fashion. Dietetic treatment, for example, had been much in

vogue in his youth, and he has more practical knowledge of it than any

one whom I have met. Massage, too, was familiar to him when it was

new to our generation. He had been trained also at a time when

instruments were in a rudimentary state, and when men learned to trust

more to their own fingers. He has a model surgical hand, muscular in the

palm, tapering in the fingers, "with an eye at the end of each." I shall not

easily forget how Dr. Patterson and I cut Sir John Sirwell, the County

Member, and were unable to find the stone. It was a horrible moment.

Both our careers were at stake. And then it was that Dr. Winter, whom

we had asked out of courtesy to be present, introduced into the wound a

finger which seemed to our excited senses to be about nine inches long,

and hooked out the stone at the end of it. "It's always well to bring one in

your waistcoat-pocket," said he with a chuckle, "but I suppose you

youngsters are above all that."

We made him president of our branch of the British Medical

Association, but he resigned after the first meeting. "The young men are

too much for me," he said. "I don't understand what they are talking

about." Yet his patients do very well. He has the healing touch--that

magnetic thing which defies explanation or analysis, but which is a very

evident fact none the less. His mere presence leaves the patient with

more hopefulness and vitality. The sight of disease affects him as dust

does a careful housewife. It makes him angry and impatient. "Tut, tut,

this will never do!" he cries, as he takes over a new case. He would shoo

Death out of the room as though he were an intrusive hen. But when the

intruder refuses to be dislodged, when the blood moves more slowly and

the eyes grow dimmer, then it is that Dr. Winter is of more avail than all

the drugs in his surgery. Dying folk cling to his hand as if the presence

of his bulk and vigour gives them more courage to face the change; and

ROUND THE RED LAMP

that kindly, windbeaten face has been the last earthly impression which

many a sufferer has carried into the unknown.

When Dr. Patterson and I--both of us young, energetic, and up-to-date-

-settled in the district, we were most cordially received by the old doctor,

who would have been only too happy to be relieved of some of his patients.

The patients themselves, however, followed their own inclinations--which

is a reprehensible way that patients have--so that we remained neglected,

with our modern instruments and our latest alkaloids, while he was serving

out senna and calomel to all the countryside. We both of us loved the old

fellow, but at the same time, in the privacy of our own intimate

conversations, we could not help commenting upon this deplorable lack of

judgment. "It's all very well for the poorer people," said Patterson.

"But after all the educated classes have a right to expect that their medical

man will know the difference between a mitral murmur and a bronchitic

rale. It's the judicial frame of mind, not the sympathetic, which is the

essential one."

I thoroughly agreed with Patterson in what he said. It happened,

however, that very shortly afterwards the epidemic of influenza broke out,

and we were all worked to death. One morning I met Patterson on my

round, and found him looking rather pale and fagged out. He made the

same remark about me. I was, in fact, feeling far from well, and I lay

upon the sofa all the afternoon with a splitting headache and pains in every

joint. As evening closed in, I could no longer disguise the fact that the

scourge was upon me, and I felt that I should have medical advice without

delay. It was of Patterson, naturally, that I thought, but somehow the idea

of him had suddenly become repugnant to me. I thought of his cold,

critical attitude, of his endless questions, of his tests and his tappings. I

wanted something more soothing--something more genial.

"Mrs. Hudson," said I to my housekeeper, would you kindly run along

to old Dr. Winter and tell him that I should be obliged to him if he would

step round?"

She was back with an answer presently. "Dr. Winter will come

round in an hour or so, sir; but he has just been called in to attend Dr.

Patterson."

ROUND THE RED LAMP

HIS FIRST OPERATION.

It was the first day of the winter session, and the third year's man was

walking with the first year's man. Twelve o'clock was just booming out

from the Tron Church.

"Let me see," said the third year's man. "You have never seen an

operation?"

"Never."

"Then this way, please. This is Rutherford's historic bar. A glass of

sherry, please, for this gentleman. You are rather sensitive, are you not?"

"My nerves are not very strong, I am afraid."

"Hum! Another glass of sherry for this gentleman. We are going to

an operation now, you know."

The novice squared his shoulders and made a gallant attempt to look

unconcerned.

"Nothing very bad--eh?"

"Well, yes--pretty bad."

"An--an amputation?"

"No; it's a bigger affair than that."

"I think--I think they must be expecting me at home."

"There's no sense in funking. If you don't go to-day, you must to-

morrow. Better get it over at once. Feel pretty fit?"

"Oh, yes; all right!" The smile was not a success.

"One more glass of sherry, then. Now come on or we shall be late.

I want you to be well in front."

"Surely that is not necessary."

"Oh, it is far better! What a drove of students! There are plenty of

new men among them. You can tell them easily enough, can't you? If

they were going down to be operated upon themselves, they could not

look whiter."

"I don't think I should look as white."

"Well, I was just the same myself. But the feeling soon wears off.

You see a fellow with a face like plaster, and before the week is out he is

eating his lunch in the dissecting rooms. I'll tell you all about the case

ROUND THE RED LAMP

when we get to the theatre."

The students were pouring down the sloping street which led to the

infirmary--each with his little sheaf of note-books in his hand. There

were pale, frightened lads, fresh from the high schools, and callous old

chronics, whose generation had passed on and left them. They swept in

an unbroken, tumultuous stream from the university gate to the hospital.

The figures and gait of the men were young, but there was little youth in

most of their faces. Some looked as if they ate too little--a few as if they

drank too much. Tall and short, tweed- coated and black, round-

shouldered, bespectacled, and slim, they crowded with clatter of feet and

rattle of sticks through the hospital gate. Now and again they thickened

into two lines, as the carriage of a surgeon of the staff rolled over the

cobblestones between.

"There's going to be a crowd at Archer's," whispered the senior man

with suppressed excitement. "It is grand to see him at work. I've seen

him jab all round the aorta until it made me jumpy to watch him. This

way, and mind the whitewash."

They passed under an archway and down a long, stone-flagged

corridor, with drab-coloured doors on either side, each marked with a

number. Some of them were ajar, and the novice glanced into them with

tingling nerves. He was reassured to catch a glimpse of cheery fires,

lines of white-counterpaned beds, and a profusion of coloured texts upon

the wall. The corridor opened upon a small hall, with a fringe of poorly

clad people seated all round upon benches. A young man, with a pair of

scissors stuck like a flower in his buttonhole and a note-book in his hand,

was passing from one to the other, whispering and writing.

"Anything good?" asked the third year's man.

"You should have been here yesterday," said the out-patient clerk,

glancing up. "We had a regular field day. A popliteal aneurism, a

Colles' fracture, a spina bifida, a tropical abscess, and an elephantiasis.

How's that for a single haul?"

"I'm sorry I missed it. But they'll come again, I suppose. What's up

with the old gentleman?"

A broken workman was sitting in the shadow, rocking himself slowly

ROUND THE RED LAMP

to and fro, and groaning. A woman beside him was trying to console him,

patting his shoulder with a hand which was spotted over with curious little

white blisters.

"It's a fine carbuncle," said the clerk, with the air of a connoisseur who

describes his orchids to one who can appreciate them. "It's on his back

and the passage is draughty, so we must not look at it, must we, daddy?

Pemphigus," he added carelessly, pointing to the woman's disfigured

hands. "Would you care to stop and take out a metacarpal?"

"No, thank you. We are due at Archer's. Come on!" and they

rejoined the throng which was hurrying to the theatre of the famous

surgeon.

The tiers of horseshoe benches rising from the floor to the ceiling were

already packed, and the novice as he entered saw vague curving lines of

faces in front of him, and heard the deep buzz of a hundred voices, and

sounds of laughter from somewhere up above him. His companion spied

an opening on the second bench, and they both squeezed into it.

"This is grand!" the senior man whispered. "You'll have a rare view

of it all."

Only a single row of heads intervened between them and the operating

table. It was of unpainted deal, plain, strong, and scrupulously clean. A

sheet of brown water-proofing covered half of it, and beneath stood a large

tin tray full of sawdust. On the further side, in front of the window, there

was a board which was strewed with glittering instruments-- forceps,

tenacula, saws, canulas, and trocars. A line of knives, with long, thin,

delicate blades, lay at one side. Two young men lounged in front of this,

one threading needles, the other doing something to a brass coffee-pot-like

thing which hissed out puffs of steam.

"That's Peterson," whispered the senior, "the big, bald man in the front

row. He's the skin- grafting man, you know. And that's Anthony

Browne, who took a larynx out successfully last winter. And there's

Murphy, the pathologist, and Stoddart, the eye-man. You'll come to

know them all soon."

"Who are the two men at the table?"

"Nobody--dressers. One has charge of the instruments and the other

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ROUNDTHEREDLAMP1ROUNDTHEREDLAMPBySIRARTHURCONANDOYLEROUNDTHEREDLAMP2THEPREFACE.Iquiterecognisetheforceofyourobjectionthataninvalidorawomaninweakhealthwouldgetnogoodfromstorieswhichattempttotreatsomefeaturesofmedicallifewithacertainamountofrealism.Ifyoudealwiththislifeatall,however,andifyouareanxious...

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ROUND THE RED LAMP(红灯四周)

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