nately it
is of no importance, gentlemen. The man will not live."

The day came when every one worked under clouds of carbolic steam
which fizzed and spouted from large brass boilers over everything; and
then the time when every one was criticizing the new, young surgeon,
Treves, who was daring to discard it, and getting as good results by
scrupulous cleanliness. His aphorism was, "Gentlemen, the secret of
surgery is the nailbrush." Now with blood examinations, germ cultures,
sera tests, X-rays, and a hundred added improvements, one can say to a
fisherman in far-off Labrador arriving on a mail steamer, and to whom
every hour lost in the fishing season spells calamity, "Yes, brother,
you can be operated on and the wound will be healed and you will be
ready to go back by the next steamer, unless some utterly unforeseen
circumstance arises."

The fallibility of diagnosis was at this very impressionable time
fixed upon my mind--a fact that has since served me in good stead. For
what can be more reactionary in human life than the man who thinks he
knows it all, whether it be in science, philosophy, or religion?

During my Christmas vacation I was asked to go north and visit my
father's brother, a well-known captain in Her Majesty's Navy, who was
also an inventor in gun machinery and sighting apparatus, and who had
been appointed the naval head of Lord Armstrong's great works at
Yarrow-on-the-Tyne. All that I was told was that he had been taken
with such severe pains in the back that he needed some one with him,
and my new-fledged dignity of "walking the hospitals" was supposed to
qualify me especially for the post. Already my uncle had seen many
doctors in London and had been ordered to the Continent for rest.
After some months, not a bit improved, he had again returned to
London. This time the doctor told his wife that it was a mental
trouble, and that he should be sent to an asylum. This she most
indignantly denied, and yet desired my company as the only medical
Grenfell, who at such a crisis could stay in the house without being
looked upon as a warder or keeper. Meantime they had consulted Sir
C.P., who had told my uncle that he had an aneurism of his aorta, and
that he must be prepared to have it break and kill him any minute. His
preparations were accordingly all made, and personally I fully
anticipated that he would fall dead before I left. He put up a
wonderful fight against excruciating pain, of which I was frequ