Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/69

Rh might as well manicure his nails before chopping off a head. The surgeon operated in a slaughter-house-suggesting frock coat of black cloth. It was stiff with the blood and the filth of years. The more sodden it was the more forcibly did it bear evidence to the surgeon's prowess. I, of course, commenced my surgical career in such a coat, of which I was quite proud. Wounds were dressed with "charpie" soaked in oil. Both oil and dressing were frankly and excultingly septic. Charpie was a species of cotton waste obtained from cast linen. It would probably now be discarded by a motor mechanic as being too dirty for use on a car.

Owing to the suppurating wounds the stench in the wards was of a kind not easily forgotten. I can recall it to this day with unappreciated ease. There was one sponge to a ward. With this putrid article and a basin of once-clear water all the wounds in the ward were washed in turn twice a day. By this ritual any chance that a patient had of recovery was eliminated. I remember a whole ward being decimated by hospital gangrene. The modern student has no knowledge of this disease. He has never seen it and, thank heaven, he never will. People often say how wonderful it was that surgical patients lived in these days.