come in?" or pick out a pain-drawn, ashy mask in the waiting line, with
an abrupt, "Bring me that case of cancer of the stomach. He's in pain.
I'll take him first."

And, in later years, I have had colleagues with whom it was positively
painful to walk down a crowded street, from the gruesome habit that they
had of picking out, and condemning to lingering deaths, the cases of
cancer, of Bright's disease, or of locomotor ataxia, that we happened to
meet. Of course, they would be the first to admit that this was only
what they would term a "long shot," a guess; but it was a guess based
upon significant changes in the patient's countenance or gait, which
their trained eye picked out at once, and it was surprising how often
this snapshot diagnosis turned out to be correct.

The first thing that a medical student has to learn is that appearances
are _not_ deceptive--except to fools. Every line of the human figure,
every proportion of a limb, every detail of size, shape, or relation in
an organ, _means_ something. Not a line upon any bone in the skeleton
which was not made by the hand-grip or thumbprint of some muscle,
tendon, or ligament; no bump or knuckle which is not a lever or
hand-hold for the grip of some muscle; not a line or a curve or an
opening in that Chinese puzzle, the skull, which was not made to protect
the brain, to accommodate an eye, to transmit a blood-vessel, or to
allow the escape of a nerve. Every minutest detail of structure means
something to the man who will take the pains to puzzle it out. And if
this is true of the foundation structure of the body, is it to be
expected that the law ceases to run upon the surface?

Not a line, not a tint, not a hollow of that living picture, the face,
but means something, if we will take the time and labor to interpret it.
Even coming events cast their shadows before upon that most exquisitely
responsive surface--half mirror, half sensitive plate--the human
countenance. The place where the moving finger of disease writes its
clearest and most unmistakable message is the one to which we must
naturally turn, the face; not merely for the infantile tenth part of a
reason which we often hear alleged, that it is the only part of the
body, except the hand, which is habitually exposed, and hence open to
observation, but because here are grouped the indicators and registers
of almost every important organ and system in the body.

What, of course, originally made the face