Page:The Cornhill magazine (Volume 1).djvu/536

 The operator now seats himself on the stool just vacated by the dresser, who has carried away the leg, and seeks in the cut surfaces before him the end of the main artery on which to place a ligature. There is no flow of blood, only a little oozing, for the tourniquet holds life's current hard and fast. Only five minutes' uncontrolled flow of the current from that great artery now so perfectly compressed, and our patient's career in this world would be closed for ever. How is it permanently held in check? and what have we to substitute now for the hissing, sparkling, and sputtering iron, and the boiling pitch? The operator takes hold of the cut end of the artery with a slender, delicately made pair of forceps, and draws it out a little, while an assistant passes round the end so drawn out a ligature of exceedingly fine whipcord, fine but strong, and carefully ties it there with double knot, and so effectually closes the vessel. A similar process is applied to perhaps six or seven other but smaller vessels, the tourniquet is removed, and no bleeding ensues. Altogether the patient has lost little more than half-a-pint of blood! The flaps are placed in apposition, the bone is well covered by them, a few stitches are put through their edges, some cool wet lint is applied all around the stump, and the patient, slumbering peacefully, is carried off to a comfortable bed ready prepared in some adjacent ward. Half an hour hence that patient will regain consciousness, and probably the first observation he makes will be, "I am quite ready for the operation, when is it going to begin?" And it takes no little repetition of the assurance that all is over to make him realize the happy truth.

So it is that he who loses the limb knows less about the process than any one concerned; infinitely less, my gentle reader, than you who have shared with us the quiet corner, and have seen all without losing consciousness, or fainting. It was an early day in the medical session, and many new men were there; one at least was observed to become very—very pale, and then slowly disappear: no one knows how or where, for neither we in the area nor those elsewhere had leisure or care to inquire.

What might have happened to somebody else had he been witness before these blessed days of chloroform, can, in the nature of things, be only a matter for speculation. It may even be surmised by some theorist, and without hazarding a very improbable guess, that a similar catastrophe might, perhaps, under such aggravating circumstances, and at a greener age, have rendered utterly futile, on his part, any attempt to describe what modern skill and science now accomplish in cutting off the leg of a patient Under Chloroform.