Chapter 81 Chapter 81

As soon as the winter term started, Philip went to practice in the outpatient department of the hospital.There are three assistant physicians in the outpatient department who take turns to see the outpatients, and each of them is on duty two days a week.Philip was cast as an assistant under Dr. Tyrrell.Dr. Tyrrell was quite popular among medical students, and everyone was eager to be his assistant.The doctor was thirty-five years old, tall and tall, with a pale face, a small head covered with short-cropped red hair, a pair of bulging blue eyes, and a shiny red face.He is eloquent and has a pleasant voice.When talking, he also likes to interject jokes.He was also a little cynical.Dr. Tyrrell is an accomplished man, has practiced medicine for many years, and is expected to be knighted soon.Because he often dealt with medical students and the poor, he had a benevolent demeanor; and because he often dealt with patients, he showed the benevolent demeanor of a strong man.All of this is the usual professional demeanor of some consultant physicians.Dr. Tyrrell's demeanor made the patient feel as if he were a schoolboy standing before an amiable teacher, and that his illness was no more than a ridiculous prank, bringing pleasure rather than pain. .

The medical students who come to practice have to go to the outpatient department to observe cases every day and try to learn some medical knowledge.However, when it is a student's turn to serve as an assistant to his supervising physician, his duties are a little more specific.At that time, the outpatient department of St. Luke's Hospital consisted of three communicating rooms and a large, dimly lit waiting room.In the waiting room there are thick marble columns and benches.The patients wait here after registering at noon.They held medicine bottles or jars in their hands, and they lined up in a long line, some were ragged and unkempt, and some were quite well dressed.All kinds of people, men, women, young and old, sat in this semi-dark waiting room, giving people a strange and terrifying impression.The situation reminded one of Dormer's eerie pictures.The walls of these rooms are painted orange-red, and the high dadoes have a tinge of maroon.It smelled of disinfectant, and as the afternoon passed, it was also filled with the smell of sweat emanating from people.The first room is the largest, with tables and chairs for doctors in the center.On both sides of this table is a slightly low table, on one side sits the resident doctor, and on the other side sits the assistant who is in charge of recording.The record book is very large, and the patient's name, age, gender, occupation, and diagnosis of the disease are registered in it.

At 1:30 in the afternoon, the resident doctor came here first, rang the bell, and informed the messenger to call in the old patients one by one.There are always many old patients.They had to get through this batch of follow-up patients as quickly as possible before Dr. Tyrrell went to work at two o'clock.The resident with Philip was a short, dapper man with an air of self-importance.He always put on a condescending posture in front of his assistants.He disapproved of the casual attitude of the medical students of his own age who did not treat him with the courtesy commensurate with his current position.He immediately set about seeing the follow-up patients.At this time, an assistant assisted him.Patients came into the consultation room in an endless stream, and all the patients in front were male patients.They were mainly looking for chronic bronchitis and "bad cough".One of them went to the resident doctor, and the other went to the assistant, and handed in their registration certificates respectively.If things go well, the resident doctor or assistant will write the words "continuous use for fourteen days" on the registration certificate, and then the patient will take the medicine bottle or jar to the pharmacy to get enough medicine for fourteen days.Some slippery patients huddled in the hope of being seen by the resident, but few succeeded.Usually only three or four people were lucky enough to be left behind because of their special condition and had to ask the resident doctor to intervene in person.

After a while, Dr. Tyrell drifted in.With his swift footsteps and quick movements, one could not help but think of a clown leaping onto a circus stage while saying, "We're in your place again."His air seemed to be telling people: What kind of ridiculous diseases are you all suffering from?When I arrive, my illness will be cured at hand!As soon as he sat down firmly, he asked if there was any follow-up patient who wanted him to see, and then he checked the patients quickly, examining them with shrewd eyes. Interlude to make a joke (amuse the assistants present to laugh heartily).The resident giggled, but from his look he seemed to think that the aides were too silly to grin.Then he grumbled, either saying that the weather was beautiful or complaining that it was too hot, and then he rang the electric bell and ordered the messenger to call the newly diagnosed patients to come in.

One by one the patients approached Dr. Tyrrell's table.Among them are old men, young men, and middle-aged men.Most belonged to laborers, including dock coolies, coachmen, factory workers and hotel waiters.However, there were also some well-dressed people among them, obviously shop assistants, clerks and the like who had a relatively superior social status.Dr. Tyrell eyed them suspiciously.Sometimes, some people deliberately put on bad clothes to pretend to be poor.But Dr. Tyrrell's eyes were sharp, and he stopped what he thought was a fake, and sometimes simply refused to see people who he thought could afford medical treatment.Women are the most troublesome troublemakers.However, their camouflage techniques are really not very clever. They often wear tattered cloaks or skirts, but they forget to wipe off the rings on their fingers.

"If you can afford jewellery, you must have money for a doctor. The hospital is a charity," said Dr. Tyrrell coldly. After he finished speaking, he threw the registration card back to the patient and called the next patient to come up. "But I have a registration certificate!" "I don't care. Get out of here! You have no right to come here and take advantage of poor people's doctor's time." The patient gave Dr. Tyrrell a savage look and retreated angrily. "She'll probably write to the newspapers about the mismanagement of the London hospitals," said Dr. Tyrrell, smiling, as he casually picked up the registration card of the next patient and cast a sly glance at the patient.

Most of the patients thought that the hospital was a national medical institution, and that part of their taxes were used to run the hospital.Therefore, they regard seeing a doctor as their due right.They also believe that doctors must be paid well for their time. Dr. Tyrrell had his assistants examine a patient each.Assistants lead the patient into an inner room.The rooms are small, and each has a couch covered with a piece of horsehair.The assistant first asks the patient various questions, and then checks his lungs, heart, and liver, and writes down the inspection results one by one on the medical record card, and at the same time prescribes according to his own judgment.When it was all over, he waited for Dr. Tyrell to come in.As soon as Dr. Tyrrell had finished watching the male patients outside, he came to the small room, followed by a small group of intern students.At this point, the assistant read out the results of his inspection aloud.After Dr. Tyrrell listened, he asked his assistant a question or two before examining the patient himself.The medical students who had come in with him just now pulled out their stethoscopes when there was a situation worth hearing.At this time, you will see such a scene: two or three students stand in front of the patient, silently listening to his chest, there may be two students listening to his back, and there are several students beside him. Students, each impatient, eager to feast their ears.Surrounded by this group of students, the patient had a bit of embarrassment on his face, but he was not necessarily unhappy to see himself being the center of people's attention.The patient listened in bewilderment while Dr. Tyrrell dissected the case articulately.Two or three students again listened intently with their stethoscopes, trying to pick out the murmurs and crackles that Dr. Tyrrell had just mentioned.After they had finished listening, they asked the patient to put on his clothes.

After the diagnosis, Tyrrell defecated back into the great room and resumed his seat at his desk.At this time, no matter which student is by his side, he will ask the student what prescription he has just seen for the patient.The student who was asked immediately reported the name of one or two medicines. "You prescribe this medicine?" Dr. Tyrrell went on. "Well, no matter how you look at it, your prescription is quite unique. However, I don't think we should do it lightly." His words always made the students roar with laughter, and he seemed to appreciate his witty remarks quite a bit, with a triumphant look in his eyes.At this time, he issued a prescription completely different from that proposed by the student.As soon as two identical cases came across, the student suggested the same prescription that Dr. Tyrrell had prescribed for the first patient, but he gave full play to his ingenuity and painstakingly prescribed a completely different medicine.Sometimes, the pharmacists in the pharmacy are exhausted all day long and their legs are tired. They like the medicines that the doctors have prepared, as well as the traditional compound medicines of the hospital that have been clinically proven to be effective for many years.Dr. Tyrrell knew it all too well, but he was happy to prescribe a complex formula.

"We've got to find something for the pharmacist to do. If we keep writing prescriptions on the prescriptions: white dirty, he's going to have a hard time." After hearing this, the students burst into bursts of enthusiastic laughter.Dr. Tyrrell glanced at them with excited eyes.Then he answered the bell and ordered the messenger who came in to say: "Please ask the follow-up female patient to come in." When conveying that the returning female patient was ushered into the consultation room, he leaned back on the back of the chair and chatted with the resident doctor.The female patients slowly entered the room, and among them were groups of anemic girls with fluffy bangs on their foreheads and pale lips.The food they ate was rough and often lingering, but they still suffered from dyspepsia.Those elderly women, some are fat and some are skinny, because they have given birth too much, they cough incessantly when the weather is cold, and they age prematurely.These women have everything from one disease to another.Big Tyrrell and the resident quickly dismissed them.As time went by, the air in the small consulting room became more and more stale.The resident doctor looked at the watch in his hand.

"Are there many female patients for the first visit today?" Tyrrell asked loudly. "Not less, I suppose," replied the resident. "Let's let them all in. You continue to look after the old patients." The first-time female patient was called into the consultation room.Men's diseases are mostly caused by excessive drinking, but for women, most of their diseases are caused by malnutrition.By six o'clock, the patients had finished watching.Philip was exhausted from standing all afternoon absorbed in attention, and from the stale air in the room.At this moment, he walked with several other assistants to the medical school for tea.He feels that the work is full of interest and yearning. Although it looks rough on the surface, it is full of human touch, which is a good material for artists to create.Philip suddenly felt ecstasy at the thought that he himself was in the position of an artist, and that the patients were mere lumps of clay in his hands.Philip shrugged amusedly as he recalled his time in Paris.At that time, he was obsessed with color, tone, value, God knows what, with the purpose of creating beautiful things.Working directly with patients of both sexes gave him a sense of empowerment he had never felt before.He found infinite pleasure in looking at their faces and listening to their conversation.They walked with different postures, some shuffled roughly, some took brisk steps, some took slow, heavy steps, and some shyly and timidly walked forward.Often one can tell what their profession is just by looking at their appearance.You learn how to ask questions so that they get your point, you discover the questions on which they are usually lying, and you know which questions to ask to get the truth out of their mouths.You find that people are asking the same questions in different ways.When receiving a prescription for a critical illness, some people either smile or make a joke, while others look downcast and hopeless.Philip found himself less timid and timid with these people than he had been with other people.He does not feel that he has any pity, because pity means putting on airs.He felt like a duck to water when he was with them.He also found that he had the ability to reassure them, and every day the doctor called him to examine; when examining a patient, he seemed to feel that the patient entrusted himself to him with a special sense of trust. "

"Perhaps," thought Philip, with a slight smile on his face at the moment, "maybe I was made to be a doctor. It would be so amusing if I accidentally chose what was right for me." gone." It seemed to Philip that he was the only assistant among the assistants who understood the drama of those afternoon shifts.To other assistants, those men and women are just patients.If the condition is complicated, they welcome it; if it is clear, they find it annoying.They are amazed to hear a murmur or to be diagnosed with a liver disease; they hear an unearthly noise from their lungs and they babble.But, for Philip, it was much more than that.He was interested just by looking at their faces, the shape of their heads, their hands, their eyes, and the height of their noses.In that outpatient room, what he saw was the human nature attacked by accident. At this time, the secular mask was roughly torn off, and what appeared in front of him was the naked heart.Occasionally, one sees an expression of self-taught asceticism, which is simply breathtaking.Once, Philip encountered a rude, illiterate male patient.He told Philip that his illness was incurable, but he tried to control his emotions as he spoke.Philip wondered at the wonderful instinct which made the old man so firm in the presence of strangers.If he himself faced his own heart, could he be so brave?Will it bow to the emotion of despair?Sometimes sad things happen.Once, a young woman brought her sister for a medical examination.The girl was eighteen years old, with a delicate face and a pair of big blue eyes.For a moment, the light-colored hair reflected strands of gold in a ray of autumn sunlight.Her complexion was amazingly beautiful.Several assistants present stared at her with smiles.In these sloppy clinics, they rarely saw such slim girls.The young woman began to introduce the medical history of her relatives, saying that both her parents died of tuberculosis.A younger brother and a younger sister also died from the same cause.The two sisters are survivors of the family.The girl has been coughing a lot lately and is getting thinner and thinner.She unbuttoned her blouse, revealing her milk-white neck.Dr. Tyrell examined it silently.As usual, his movements were quick and sharp.He ordered two or three assistants to listen with a stethoscope to the point indicated by his hand.Then he told the girl to button up her dress.The young woman stood a little further away.In order not to let the girl hear, she lowered her voice to speak.Her voice trembled with fear. "Doctor, she doesn't have consumption, does she?" "I'm afraid she has it without a doubt." "She's the last one. If she's gone again, I won't have any relatives." The young woman began to sob.Dr. Tyrell looked at her sullenly.In private, he thought that she herself was not like this, and she also didn't live long.The girl turned and found her sister weeping.She understands what that means.The blood color gradually faded from her charming face, and two lines of tears flowed down her cheeks.They both stood for a minute or so, sobbing silently.Then, the young woman forgot about the few people who were watching coldly, walked up to her sister, hugged her in her arms, and shook her back and forth, as if she was coaxing a baby. After they left, a student asked: "how long do you think she'll live" Dr. Tyrell shrugged his shoulders. "Her brother and sister died three months after the first symptoms. She would do the same. If they had money, they could figure it out. You can't send them to St. Mary's Hospital. Yes. It's unthinkable for people like them." One day, a strong middle-aged man in his prime came.There was a constant pain in one part of his body, which made him suffer.But the lame doctor who saw him did not seem to relieve his pain in the slightest, and finally diagnosed it as an incurable disease, and he had to wait for death.Isn't that the kind of horrifying yet justifiably inevitable death that science is powerless against?This death is inevitable because the man is but a cog in the vast machine of social civilization, powerless, like an automaton, to change his surroundings.To recover from his illness, he must rest completely.However, Dr. Tyrrell did not ask him to do the impossible. "You should switch to a lighter job." "There's no such thing as light work in my trade." "Well, if you go on like this, you will die. You are very ill." "You mean I'm dying?" "I hate to say it, but you're certainly not fit for heavy work." "If I quit, who will support my wife and children?" Dr. Tyrell shrugged.This dilemma has appeared before him no less than a hundred times.Right now, time is running out, and there are still many patients waiting for him. "Okay then, I'll give you some medicine, come back in a week and let me know how you feel." The man picked up the prescription with no effect on it, turned around and walked out.Let the doctor say whatever he likes.He didn't feel bad about being unable to go on working.He has a good job, how can he let it go easily. "I said he had a year to live," said Dr. Tyrrell. Occasionally, dramatic events occur in the clinic.From time to time, someone with a strong London accent said some humorous lingo.Now and then an old woman came in, like those sorts of characters in Dickens's writings, and she was very talkative, babbling on and on, which amused them.Once a woman came, a ballerina from a well-known vaudeville theater.She looked to be fifty years old, but she reported that she was only twenty-eight years old, her face was covered with thick powder, and a pair of big black eyes were rolling slowly, brazenly winking at the students frequently.Her smile was both obscene and seductive.She is very confident.Of particular interest was her casual intimacy with Dr. Tyrell just as much as she would have with a committed suitor.She suffered from chronic bronchitis, which she complained to Dr. Tyrrell of being an inconvenience to her present profession. "I don't really know why I have to be sick like this. To be honest, I don't. I've never been sick a day in my life. You just have to look at me to know it's true. " She rolled her eyes at the young people around her and gave them a meaningful wink with her fake long eyelashes.She also showed her yellow teeth at them.She had a Cockney accent, but she spoke with a refined emotion, and every word she uttered was interesting to the listener. "It's what's called a cough," replied Dr. Tyrell gravely. "Many middle-aged women suffer from it." "Oh, dear! You'd be very nice to talk to a lady. I've never been called a middle-aged woman." Her eyes were wide open, her head tilted to one side, and she gazed at Dr. Tyrrell with indescribable guile. "That's the downside of our profession," said Dr. Tyrrell. "It forces us to be less polite sometimes." As she took the prescription, she smiled at Dr. Tyrell again, a smile that was a little bewitchingly charming. "You're going to come and see me dance, honey, aren't you?" "I will definitely go." Dr. Tyrrell rang the bell and ordered a patient to be brought down. "I am very glad to have you gentlemen here protecting me." The overall impression, however, is neither tragic nor comic.This impression cannot be expressed in words.It is really varied and colorful; full of tears and laughter, happiness and sorrow.It's all so tedious, interesting and unremarkable.The situation is just as you can see: it is so noisy, enthusiastic, and so serious; it is so sad, ridiculous, and so insignificant; it is simple and complicated; There is the motherly love of mother for child; the love of man for woman; lust trudging across the room, punishing sinner and innocent, helpless wives and poor children; The price was heavy; the sighs of death echoed from room to room; new life was diagnosed there, and filled some poor girls with fear and shame.There's nothing good or bad here, just plain truth.this is life.