seriousness plays the part of the and in medicine bitter to the taste but in the result there are a few stories in this little collection which might have such an effect and i have so far shared in your feeling that i have reserved them from publication in the reader can see that they are medical stories and can if he or she be so minded avoid them yours very truly a p s � you ask about the lamp it is the usual sign of the general in england contents behind the times his operation a of the generation a false start the curse of eye a s wife ill the of lady a question of a medical document lot ko the los the doctors of the surgeon talks bound the bed lamp behind the times my first interview with dr james winter was under dramatic circumstances it occurred at two in the morning in the bedroom of an old country house i kicked him twice on the white waistcoat and knocked off his gold spectacles while he with the aid of a female stifled my angry cries in a flannel and thrust me into a warm bath i am told that one of my parents who happened to be present remarked in a whisper that there was nothing the matter with my lungs i cannot recall how dr winter looked at the time for i had other things to think of but his description of my own appearance is far from flattering a head a body like a goose very legs and feet with the turned � those are the main which he can remember from this time the of my life were the which dr winter round the red lamp made upon me he me he cut me for an he me for it was a world of peace and he the one dark cloud that threatened but at last there came a time of real illness � a time when i lay for months together inside my basket bed and then it was that i learned that that hard face could that those country made creaking boots could steal very gently to a bedside and that that rough voice could thin into a whisper when it spoke to a sick child and now the child is himself a medical man and yet dr winter is the same as ever i can see no change since first i can remember him save that perhaps the hair is a trifle and the huge shoulders a little more bowed he is a very tall man though he loses a couple of inches from his stoop that big back of his has curved itself over sick beds until it has set in that shape his face is of a brown and tells of long winter drives over bleak country roads with the wind and the rain in his teeth it looks smooth at a little distance but as you approach him you see that it is shot with innumerable fine wrinkles like a last year s apple they are hardly to be seen when he is in repose but when he laughs his face breaks like a glass and you then that though he looks old he must be older than he looks behind the times how old that is i could never discover i have often tried to find out and have struck his stream as high up as george iv and even the but without ever getting quite to the source his mind must have been open to impressions very early but it must also have closed early for the politics of the day have little interest for him while he is fiercely excited about questions which are entirely he shakes his head when he speaks of the first reform bill and expresses grave doubts as to its wisdom and i have heard him when he was warmed by a glass of wine say bitter things about robert and his of the com laws the death of that brought the history of england to a definite close and dr winter to everything which had happened since then as to an insignificant but it was only when i had myself become a medical man that i was able to appreciate how entirely he is a of a past generation he had learned his medicine under that and forgotten system by which a youth was to a surgeon in the days when the study of was often approached through a grave his views upon his own profession are even more than in politics fifty years have brought him little and deprived him of less was well within the teach round the bed lamp ing of his youth though i think he has a secret preference for bleeding he would practise freely but for public opinion he regards as a dangerous and he always with his tongue when it is mentioned he has even been known to say vain things about and to refer to the as a new french toy he carries one in his hat out of deference to the expectations of his but he is very hard of hearing so that it makes little difference whether he uses it or not he reads as a duty his weekly medical er so that he has a general idea as to the advance of modem science he always in looking upon it as a huge and rather ludicrous experiment the theory of disease set him for a long time and his favourite joke in the sick room was to say shut the door or the will be getting in as to the theory it struck him as being the crowning joke of the century the children in the nursery and the ancestors in the stable he would cry and laugh the tears out of his eyes he is so very much behind the day that occasionally as things move 