From this time onwards the epochs of my life were the periodical assaults which Dr. Winter made upon me. He vaccinated5 me; he cut me for an abscess; he blistered6 me for mumps7. It was a world of peace and he the one dark cloud that threatened. But at last there came a time of real illness—a time when I lay for months together inside my wickerwork-basket bed, and then it was that I learned that that hard face could relax, that those country-made creaking boots could steal very gently to a bedside, and that that rough voice could thin into a whisper when it spoke8 to a sick child.
And now the child is himself a medical man, and yet Dr. Winter is the same as ever. I can see no change since first I can remember him, save that perhaps the brindled9 hair is a trifle whiter, and the huge shoulders a little more bowed. He is a very tall man, though he loses a couple of inches from his stoop. That big back of his has curved itself over sick beds until it has set in that shape. His face is of a walnut10 brown, and tells of long winter drives over bleak11 country roads, with the wind and the rain in his teeth. It looks smooth at a little distance, but as you approach him you see that it is shot with innumerable fine wrinkles like a last year’s apple. They are hardly to be seen when he is in repose12; but when he laughs his face breaks like a starred glass, and you realise then that though he looks old, he must be older than he looks.
How old that is I could never discover. I have often tried to find out, and have struck his stream as high up as George IV and even the Regency, but without ever getting quite to the source. His mind must have been open to impressions very early, but it must also have closed early, for the politics of the day have little interest for him, while he is fiercely excited about questions which are entirely13 prehistoric14. He shakes his head when he speaks of the first Reform Bill and expresses grave doubts as to its wisdom, and I have heard him, when he was warmed by a glass of wine, say bitter things about Robert Peel and his abandoning of the Corn Laws. The death of that statesman brought the history of England to a definite close, and Dr. Winter refers to everything which had happened since then as to an insignificant15 anticlimax16.
But it was only when I had myself become a medical man that I was able to appreciate how entirely he is a survival of a past generation. He had learned his medicine under that obsolete17 and forgotten system by which a youth was apprenticed18 to a surgeon, in the days when the study of anatomy19 was often approached through a violated grave. His views upon his own profession are even more reactionary20 than in politics. Fifty years have brought him little and deprived him of less. Vaccination21 was well within the teaching of his youth, though I think he has a secret preference for inoculation22. Bleeding he would practise freely but for public opinion. Chloroform he regards as a dangerous innovation, and he always clicks with his tongue when it is mentioned. He has even been known to say vain things about Laennec, and to refer to the stethoscope as “a new-fangled French toy.” He carries one in his hat out of deference23 to the expectations of his patients, but he is very hard of hearing, so that it makes little difference whether he uses it or not.
He reads, as a duty, his weekly medical paper, so that he has a general idea as to the advance of modern science. He always persists in looking upon it as a huge and rather ludicrous experiment. The germ theory of disease set him chuckling24 for a long time, and his favourite joke in the sick room was to say, “Shut the door or the germs will be getting in.” As to the Darwinian theory, it struck him as being the crowning joke of the century. “The children in the nursery and the ancestors in the stable,” he would cry, and laugh the tears out of his eyes.
He is so very much behind the day that occasionally, as things move round in their usual circle, he finds himself, to his bewilderment, in the front of the fashion. Dietetic treatment, for example, had been much in vogue25 in his youth, and he has more practical knowledge of it than any one whom I have met. Massage26, too, was familiar to him when it was new to our generation. He had been trained also at a time when instruments were in a rudimentary state, and when men learned to trust more to their own fingers. He has a model surgical27 hand, muscular in the palm, tapering28 in the fingers, “with an eye at the end of each.” I shall not easily forget how Dr. Patterson and I cut Sir John Sirwell, the County Member, and were unable to find the stone. It was a horrible moment. Both our careers were at stake. And then it was that Dr. Winter, whom we had asked out of courtesy to be present, introduced into the wound a finger which seemed to our excited senses to be about nine inches long, and hooked out the stone at the end of it. “It’s always well to bring one in your waistcoat-pocket,” said he with a chuckle29, “but I suppose you youngsters are above all that.”
We made him president of our branch of the British Medical Association, but he resigned after the first meeting. “The young men are too much for me,” he said. “I don’t understand what they are talking about.” Yet his patients do very well. He has the healing touch—that magnetic thing which defies explanation or analysis, but which is a very evident fact none the less. His mere30 presence leaves the patient with more hopefulness and vitality31. The sight of disease affects him as dust does a careful housewife. It makes him angry and impatient. “Tut, tut, this will never do!” he cries, as he takes over a new case. He would shoo Death out of the room as though he were an intrusive32 hen. But when the intruder refuses to be dislodged, when the blood moves more slowly and the eyes grow dimmer, then it is that Dr. Winter is of more avail than all the drugs in his surgery. Dying folk cling to his hand as if the presence of his bulk and vigour33 gives them more courage to face the change; and that kindly34, windbeaten face has been the last earthly impression which many a sufferer has carried into the unknown.
When Dr. Patterson and I—both of us young, energetic, and up-to-date—settled in the district, we were most cordially received by the old doctor, who would have been only too happy to be relieved of some of his patients. The patients themselves, however, followed their own inclinations—which is a reprehensible35 way that patients have—so that we remained neglected, with our modern instruments and our latest alkaloids, while he was serving out senna and calomel to all the countryside. We both of us loved the old fellow, but at the same time, in the privacy of our own intimate conversations, we could not help commenting upon this deplorable lack of judgment36. “It’s all very well for the poorer people,” said Patterson. “But after all the educated classes have a right to expect that their medical man will know the difference between a mitral murmur37 and a bronchitic rale. It’s the judicial38 frame of mind, not the sympathetic, which is the essential one.”
I thoroughly39 agreed with Patterson in what he said. It happened, however, that very shortly afterwards the epidemic40 of influenza41 broke out, and we were all worked to death. One morning I met Patterson on my round, and found him looking rather pale and fagged out. He made the same remark about me. I was, in fact, feeling far from well, and I lay upon the sofa all the afternoon with a splitting headache and pains in every joint42. As evening closed in, I could no longer disguise the fact that the scourge43 was upon me, and I felt that I should have medical advice without delay. It was of Patterson, naturally, that I thought, but somehow the idea of him had suddenly become repugnant to me. I thought of his cold, critical attitude, of his endless questions, of his tests and his tappings. I wanted something more soothing—something more genial44.
“Mrs. Hudson,” said I to my housekeeper45, “would you kindly run along to old Dr. Winter and tell him that I should be obliged to him if he would step round?”
She was back with an answer presently. “Dr. Winter will come round in an hour or so, sir; but he has just been called in to attend Dr. Patterson.”
点击收听单词发音
1 accomplice | |
n.从犯,帮凶,同谋 | |
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2 stifled | |
(使)窒息, (使)窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 ); 镇压,遏制; 堵 | |
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3 flannel | |
n.法兰绒;法兰绒衣服 | |
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4 fluffy | |
adj.有绒毛的,空洞的 | |
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5 vaccinated | |
[医]已接种的,种痘的,接种过疫菌的 | |
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6 blistered | |
adj.水疮状的,泡状的v.(使)起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 );(使表皮等)涨破,爆裂 | |
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7 mumps | |
n.腮腺炎 | |
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8 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
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9 brindled | |
adj.有斑纹的 | |
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10 walnut | |
n.胡桃,胡桃木,胡桃色,茶色 | |
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11 bleak | |
adj.(天气)阴冷的;凄凉的;暗淡的 | |
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12 repose | |
v.(使)休息;n.安息 | |
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13 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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14 prehistoric | |
adj.(有记载的)历史以前的,史前的,古老的 | |
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15 insignificant | |
adj.无关紧要的,可忽略的,无意义的 | |
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16 anticlimax | |
n.令人扫兴的结局;突降法 | |
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17 obsolete | |
adj.已废弃的,过时的 | |
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18 apprenticed | |
学徒,徒弟( apprentice的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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19 anatomy | |
n.解剖学,解剖;功能,结构,组织 | |
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20 reactionary | |
n.反动者,反动主义者;adj.反动的,反动主义的,反对改革的 | |
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21 vaccination | |
n.接种疫苗,种痘 | |
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22 inoculation | |
n.接芽;预防接种 | |
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23 deference | |
n.尊重,顺从;敬意 | |
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24 chuckling | |
轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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25 Vogue | |
n.时髦,时尚;adj.流行的 | |
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26 massage | |
n.按摩,揉;vt.按摩,揉,美化,奉承,篡改数据 | |
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27 surgical | |
adj.外科的,外科医生的,手术上的 | |
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28 tapering | |
adj.尖端细的 | |
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29 chuckle | |
vi./n.轻声笑,咯咯笑 | |
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30 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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31 vitality | |
n.活力,生命力,效力 | |
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32 intrusive | |
adj.打搅的;侵扰的 | |
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33 vigour | |
(=vigor)n.智力,体力,精力 | |
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34 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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35 reprehensible | |
adj.该受责备的 | |
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36 judgment | |
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见 | |
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37 murmur | |
n.低语,低声的怨言;v.低语,低声而言 | |
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38 judicial | |
adj.司法的,法庭的,审判的,明断的,公正的 | |
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39 thoroughly | |
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地 | |
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40 epidemic | |
n.流行病;盛行;adj.流行性的,流传极广的 | |
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41 influenza | |
n.流行性感冒,流感 | |
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42 joint | |
adj.联合的,共同的;n.关节,接合处;v.连接,贴合 | |
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43 scourge | |
n.灾难,祸害;v.蹂躏 | |
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44 genial | |
adj.亲切的,和蔼的,愉快的,脾气好的 | |
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45 housekeeper | |
n.管理家务的主妇,女管家 | |
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