nd he stood it well. If he had ever
been a little irregular he atoned for it in that long martyrdom. He
kept an admirable record of his own symptoms, and worked out the eye
changes more fully than has ever been done. When the ptosis got very
bad he would hold his eyelid up with one hand while he wrote. Then,
when he could not co-ordinate his muscles to write, he dictated to his
nurse. So died, in the odour of science, James Walker, aet. 45.

"Poor old Walker was very fond of experimental surgery, and he broke
ground in several directions. Between ourselves, there may have been
some more ground-breaking afterwards, but he did his best for his
cases. You know M'Namara, don't you? He always wears his hair long.
He lets it be understood that it comes from his artistic strain, but it
is really to conceal the loss of one of his ears. Walker cut the other
one off, but you must not tell Mac I said so.

"It was like this. Walker had a fad about the portio dura--the motor
to the face, you know--and he thought paralysis of it came from a
disturbance of the blood supply. Something else which counterbalanced
that disturbance might, he thought, set it right again. We had a very
obstinate case of Bell's paralysis in the wards, and had tried it with
every conceivable thing, blistering, tonics, nerve-stretching,
galvanism, needles, but all without result. Walker got it into his
head that removal of the ear would increase the blood supply to the
part, and he very soon gained the consent of the patient to the
operation.

"Well, we did it at night. Walker, of course, felt that it was
something of an experiment, and did not wish too much talk about it
unless it proved successful. There were half-a-dozen of us there,
M'Namara and I among the rest. The room was a small one, and in the
centre was in the narrow table, with a macintosh over the pillow, and a
blanket which extended almost to the floor on either side. Two
candles, on a side-table near the pillow, supplied all the light. In
came the patient, with one side of his face as smooth as a baby's, and
the other all in a quiver with fright. He lay down, and the chloroform
towel was placed over his face, while Walker threaded his needles in
the candle light. The chloroformist stood at the head of the table,
and M'Namara was stationed at the side to control the patient. The
rest of us stood by to assist.

"Well, the man was about half over when he fell into one of tho