Reminiscences of the King's Physician Tue Evernant Man anp Omer Rewiniscexces. By Sir Frederick Treves, Bart., G.c.v.0., CB, LbD., Ser-leant-Surgeon to His Majesty the King. Cassell & Ca. 7s. 6d. net.
Whether he is dealing with fact or fancy, Sir Frederick Treves is; always interesting, and there can be no doubt that he would have been a great novelist if destiny had not made him one of the great aitists of modern "surgery. The story of the horrible caricature of the human form divine, whic: gives a title to his new book, is told with almost intolerable paths. If "The Elephant Man" is widely read on the other sde of the Atlantic, it may help to put an end to the odious traffic in human' deformity which still flourishes there The description of this lusus nature. ig too terrible to repeat; it seems to have been a case elephantiasis, affecting the bones} as well as the flesh, and the hid>- onsness of the disease was em-Phasized by the fact that the unfortunate man possessed one per-feet limb—"a delicately shapd arm covered with fine skin and provided with a beautiful hand which any woman might have envied." The appalling thing is that John Merrick, for such wag his rame, was for many years a twcpenny show, and of the many thousands who shuddered at the sight of him, noti one ever thought of rescuing him from his_unthinkable misery until Sir Frederick Treves took him to the London Hospital, raised money for his support, and had him lodged in. two that great clearinghouse of human sufferings. He proved to have a poet's soul in his dreadful form. He was finally reconciled to the kiief residue of his life by tha kindness of the great surgeon's lady friends—including Queen Alexandra herself—who came to see him, shook hands with him, and smiled at him: their smiles he could not return, for his face was a dreadful, expressionless mask which wag only capable of tears.
In other sketches. Sir Frederick takes us back to the almost inconceivable days when anesthetics and asceptic-treatment were unknown. Surgeons would operate in old frock coats of black cloth, stiff with the blood and grime of years, There would be one sponge to a sard, and all the wounds thers would be washed twice a day fror a single basin of water. The firse time Sir Frederick entered the operating theatre there was a man on the table who was shrieking vehemently, and the surgeon, taking him by the arm, said, "You seem to have a strong hack; lay hold of that rope and pull." They were frying to reduce a dislocated hip by means of compound pulleys. The dislocation, however, was not reduced, and the man' remained crippled for life.
To-day a well-instructed schoolgirl would reduce a recent hip dislocation unaided. But the following anecdote brings home to the reader evem more emphatically the surgical' patient's small chance of surviving. Sir Frederick was trying to goh a mother's consent to a minor operation on her daughter. After the whole subject had been. discussed in a sympathetic and hopeful man-rer, the mother. replied: "Oh, it is all very well to talk about con-. senting, but who is to pay for the funeral Other strange, true stories emerge in memory as the author turns over the pages of old case-books. Some of them touch on the doctor's struggles with fanaticism and ignorance in India, where the sick native has more confidence in a cried frog suspended from tha neck in a bag than in the whole Eritish Pharmacopeia. In 0a3 powerful short story he shows how the great surgeon is born, not wade, having qualities not to be expressed by diplomas nor appratsed by degrees. "He must know the human body as a_ forester knows his wood; must know it even hetter than he,. must know the loots and branches of every tree, the source and wanderings of every rivulet, the banks of every alley, the flowers sot every glade." The tragedy is that of an operation for appendicitis on his own wife by a young surgeon who had won medals and certificates, but lacked the born - operator's peculiar gift of solving an unexpected problem. He makes a fatal mistake, loses his wife, but does nut lose her belief in him; for with. last gleam of consciousness a smile—radiant, grateful, adoring—illumines her face, and with her last breath she whispers:. Wonderful boy!"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.