ither read nor write; and I begged my mother to let me stay with her in
the hospital. She applied for permission to the director, and received a
favorable answer. I was placed under the care of one of the physicians
(Dr. Mueller), who took a great fancy to me, and made me go with him
wherever he went while engaged in the hospital. My eyes being bandaged, he
led me by the hand, calling me his "little blind doctor." In this way I
was constantly with him, hearing all his questions and directions, which
impressed themselves the more strongly on my mind from the fact that I
could not see, but had to gain all my knowledge through hearing alone.
One afternoon, when I had taken the bandage off my eyes for the first
time, Dr. Muller told me that there was a corpse of a young man to be seen
in the dead-house, that had turned completely green in consequence of
poison that he had eaten. I went there after my rounds with him: but
finding the room filled with relatives, who were busily engaged in
adorning the body with flowers, I thought that I would not disturb them,
but would wait until they had gone before I looked at it; and went
meanwhile through the adjoining rooms. These were all freshly painted. The
dissecting-tables, with the necessary apparatus, stood in the centre;
while the bodies, clad in white gowns, were ranged on boards along the
walls. I examined every thing; came back, and looked to my heart's content
at the poisoned young man, without noticing that not only the relatives
had left, but that the prosector had also gone away, after locking up the
whole building I then went a second time to the other rooms, and looked
again at every thing there; and at last, when it became dark and I could
not leave the house, sat down upon the floor, and went to sleep, after
knocking for half an hour at the door, in the hope that some passer might
hear.
My mother, who knew that I had gone with Dr. Mueller, did not trouble
herself about me until nine o'clock, when she grew uneasy at my stay; and,
thinking that he might have taken me to his rooms, went there in search of
me, but found that he was out, and that the doors were locked. She then
inquired of the people in the house whether they knew any thing about me,
and was told that they had last seen me going into the dead-house. Alarmed
at this intelligence, my mother hastened to the prosector, who unwillingly
went with her to the park in which the dead-house stood, assuring her all
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