登陆注册
5228800000134

第134章 IX(3)

I can hardly believe my own memory when I recall the old practitioners and Professors who were still going round the hospitals when I mingled with the train of students that attended the morning visits. See that bent old man who is groping his way through the wards of La Charity. That is the famous Baron Boyer, author of the great work on surgery in nine volumes, a writer whose clearness of style commends his treatise to general admiration, and makes it a kind of classic. He slashes away at a terrible rate, they say, when he gets hold of the subject of fistula in its most frequent habitat, --but I never saw him do more than look as if he wanted to cut a good dollop out of a patient he was examining. The short, square, substantial man with iron-gray hair, ruddy face, and white apron is Baron Larrey, Napoleon's favorite surgeon, the most honest man he ever saw,--it is reputed that he called him. To go round the Hotel des Invalides with Larrey was to live over the campaigns of Napoleon, to look on the sun of Austerlitz, to hear the cannons of Marengo, to struggle through the icy waters of the Beresina, to shiver in the snows of the Russian retreat, and to gaze through the battle smoke upon the last charge of the red lancers on the redder field of Waterloo. Larrey was still strong and sturdy as I saw him, and few portraits remain printed in livelier colors on the tablet of my memory.

Leave the little group of students which gathers about Larrey beneath the gilded dome of the Invalides and follow me to the Hotel Dieu, where rules and reigns the master-surgeon of his day, at least so far as Paris and France are concerned,--the illustrious Baron Dupuytren.

No man disputed his reign, some envied his supremacy. Lisfranc shrugged his shoulders as he spoke of "ce grand homme de 1'autre cots de la riviere," that great man on the other side of the river, but the great man he remained, until he bowed before the mandate which none may disobey. "Three times," said Bouillaud, "did the apoplectic thunderbolt fall on that robust brain,"--it yielded at last as the old bald cliff that is riven and crashes down into the valley. I saw him before the first thunderbolt had descended: a square, solid man, with a high and full-domed head, oracular in his utterances, indifferent to those around him, sometimes, it was said, very rough with them. He spoke in low, even tones, with quiet fluency, and was listened to with that hush of rapt attention which I have hardly seen in any circle of listeners unless when such men as ex-President John Quincy Adams or Daniel Webster were the speakers. I do not think that Dupuytren has left a record which explains his influence, but in point of fact he dominated those around him in a remarkable manner.

You must have all witnessed something of the same kind. The personal presence of some men carries command with it, and their accents silence the crowd around them, when the same words from other lips might fall comparatively unheeded.

As for Lisfranc, I can say little more of him than that he was a great drawer of blood and hewer of members. I remember his ordering a wholesale bleeding of his patients, right and left, whatever might be the matter with them, one morning when a phlebotomizing fit was on him. I recollect his regretting the splendid guardsmen of the old Empire,--for what? because they had such magnificent thighs to amputate. I got along about as far as that with him, when I ceased to be a follower of M. Lisfranc.

The name of Velpeau must have reached many of you, for he died in 1867, and his many works made his name widely known. Coming to Paris in wooden shoes, starving, almost, at first, he raised himself to great eminence as a surgeon and as an author, and at last obtained the Professorship to which his talents and learning entitled him.

His example may be an encouragement to some of my younger hearers who are born, not with the silver spoon in their mouths, but with the two-tined iron fork in their hands. It is a poor thing to take up their milk porridge with in their young days, but in after years it will often transfix the solid dumplings that roll out of the silver spoon. So Velpeau found it. He had not what is called genius, he was far from prepossessing in aspect, looking as if he might have wielded the sledge-hammer (as I think he had done in early life) rather than the lancet, but he had industry, determination, intelligence, character, and he made his way to distinction and prosperity, as some of you sitting on these benches and wondering anxiously what is to become of you in the struggle for life will have done before the twentieth century has got halfway through its first quarter. A good sound head over a pair of wooden shoes is a great deal better than a wooden head belonging to an owner who cases his feet in calf-skin, but a good brain is not enough without a stout heart to fill the four great conduits which carry at once fuel and fire to that mightiest of engines.

How many of you who are before me are familiarly acquainted with the name of Broussais, or even with that of Andral? Both were lecturing at the Ecole de Medicine, and I often heard them. Broussais was in those days like an old volcano, which has pretty nearly used up its fire and brimstone, but is still boiling and bubbling in its interior, and now and then sends up a spirt of lava and a volley of pebbles. His theories of gastro-enteritis, of irritation and inflammation as the cause of disease, and the practice which sprang from them, ran over the fields of medicine for a time like flame over the grass of the prairies. The way in which that knotty-featured, savage old man would bring out the word irritation--with rattling and rolling reduplication of the resonant letter r--might have taught a lesson in articulation to Salvini. But Broussais's theory was languishing and well-nigh become obsolete, and this, no doubt, added vehemence to his defence of his cherished dogmas.

同类推荐
  • 炮炙全书

    炮炙全书

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 详刑公案

    详刑公案

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 说诗晬语

    说诗晬语

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 天竺别集

    天竺别集

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 梵网经述记

    梵网经述记

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 快穿大佬总是在找我

    快穿大佬总是在找我

    (1v1独宠)天才研究员表示要炸了地球,他轻笑:“除非你们把余姝找来。”偏执少主垂眉:“不毁能量石可以,把余姝找来。”大奸商呢喃:“金银财宝都不可以不要,余姝在哪?”总在被寻找的余姝茫然地眨了眨眼,伸手给出抱抱,某人顿了顿,如此,整个世界都给你。
  • 欧阳先生请饶了我吧

    欧阳先生请饶了我吧

    前世为了抢回女儿抚养权,她深夜前往前夫的办公室找寻机会,却没有想到被渣男渣女害死了。重生归来,她一心两用,仇要报,爱要谈,她要渣男渣女活着比死了还痛苦,自己还要好好活一回。
  • 艾泽拉斯大领主

    艾泽拉斯大领主

    艾泽拉斯拥有无数条时间线,而这正是玩家们赖以生存的‘服务器’。每一个服务器都是全新的、与众不同的故事。而在众多的服务之中,有一条服务器即使是青铜龙也不愿意轻易踏入其中。因为那里生活着一个被死亡所眷顾的人!
  • 阳光下的守望(让学生感受亲情的故事全集)

    阳光下的守望(让学生感受亲情的故事全集)

    亲情如一首永远唱不倦的老歌,古老的曲调中饱含浓浓的真爱;亲情似一杯淡淡的绿茶,虽不浓郁但却散发着淡雅的醇香;亲情似大海里的一叶小舟,于惊涛骇浪中承载着风雨同舟、不离不弃的誓言。拥有亲情,便拥有了世间一切的美好,让这浓浓的爱、悠悠的情化作一缕春风,吹来桃红柳绿,吹开心底似锦的繁花……在最无助的人生路上,亲情是最持久的动力,给予我们无私的帮助和依靠;在最寂寞的情感路上,亲情是最真诚的陪伴,让我们感受到无比的温馨和安慰;在最无奈的十字路口,亲情是最清晰的路标,指引我们成功到达目标。
  • 门主大人

    门主大人

    “恭喜宿主,获得黄蓉打狗棒法体验卡一张,时效为一个月。”“恭喜宿主,获得北丐洪七公专属套装,使用后,增加降龙十八掌威力二十点。”燕北来到另外一个世界,外挂傍身,系统激活,建立无敌宗门。
  • 诡闻事件溥

    诡闻事件溥

    以第一人称,记录一系列诡异匪夷所思的事件
  • 曼哈顿情缘

    曼哈顿情缘

    本书一共十二篇,一年之中每月一篇,记录了以曼哈顿为背景的十二个小故事。本书与马修斯的《曼哈顿花絮》是姊妹篇,是又一本记录时节的纽约城市月历。本书与《曼哈顿花絮》是姊妹篇,都是以曼哈顿为背景的12个月里的12个小故事,故遵循上本书命名原则《曼哈顿**》,不按原名翻译。再者,本书言情较多,故名“情缘”。
  • 延缓衰老您也能做到

    延缓衰老您也能做到

    让衰老的过程缓慢一点,让生命质量提高一些。一方面,需要老年医学工作者的探索研究;另一方面,需要老年人自己学习掌握一些科学知识,指导生活。朱志明教授是我国第一代老年医学家,由他和他的同事们经20余年的科学研究,完成世界上首次追访长寿老人时间最长的科学调查,探索出一些值得老年人借鉴的长寿经验。老年人若能按照专家们研究总结的科学长寿方法,在日常生活中注意养生保健,不仅能给自己带来健康幸福的晚年,同时,也为子女解除后顾之忧,为社会做出贡献。
  • 冠军教父
  • 重生星际时代

    重生星际时代

    带着生命空间和记忆重生,必须在二十岁之前成为S级异能者,否则就要挂?我勒个去,看来到了这星际时代,姐不发威不行啦!嗯,这位帅哥,你想以武求亲?可以,关门,众亲友上!敢上门调戏,就要有被群殴的觉悟。