MEDICAL STUDIES 29
the lotions, but are particularly pleasant to munch, and I ate them in abundance when the humour seized me. I n later years I found poppy seeds in common use somewhere in Germany, for making a particular pudding; I think it was in Bonn.
The duties gradually imposed on me were to go with the surgeons on their morning rounds, always to attend in the accident room, where persons suffering from accidents were received whether in the night or day, and to help in* dressing them, also to be present at all operations, and to take part at every post-mortem examination, of which there were perhaps two or three weekly. The times of which I am speaking were long before those of chloroform, and many long years before that of Pasteur and Sir Joseph Lister. The stethoscope was considered generally to be new-fangled ; the older and naturally somewhat deaf practitioner§ pooh-poohed and never used it.
I cannot understand to this day why youths selected for their powers of sharp hearing should not be so far instructed as to be used by physicians, much as pointers and setters are. used by sportsmen. They could be taught what to listen for, probably by means
of some sound-emitting instruments more or less muffled, and how to describe what they heard. A patient during the incipient stage of his disease might be submitted to examination by one or more of these quick-hearing youths, who would report to the doctor, who thereupon would form and express his opinion. Similarly as regards touch, of which great delicacy is of the highest importance.. Conceive what help might be given by them in discovering deeply seated tumours,
