Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/66

54 and finish in the applying of a dressing. She was on duty from early in the morning until late at night, and knew little of "hours off" and "half-days." In the personnel of the hospital of half a century ago she was an outstanding figure, yet now she is as extinct as the dodo.

The hospital in the days of which I speak was anathema. The poor people hated it. They dreaded it. They looked upon it primarily as a place where people died. It was a matter of difficulty to induce a patient to enter the wards. They feared an operation, and with good cause, for an operation then was a very dubious matter. There were stories afloat of things that happened in the hospital, and it could not be gainsaid that certain of those stories were true.

Treatment was very rough. The surgeon was rough. He had inherited that attitude from the days when operations were carried through without anæsthetics, and when he had need to be rough, strong and quick, as well as very indifferent to pain. Pain was with him a thing that had to be. It was a regrettable feature of disease. It had to be submitted to. At the present day pain is a thing that has not to be. It has to be relieved and not to be merely endured.

Many common measures of treatment involved