The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1892-12-21
Scenes In q Hospital.

The eager man, the selfish man, the
busy man, the self-sbsorbed man, the
mau who repines at his fate or who e1-
ults under his fortune, ought now ard
then take a stroll through some great
hospital. There is whole page of les
sons to he learned in making such a
round. 1t is a great subduer of mortal
pride; it is great darnper on human
egotism it is a mighty notice to poor
mortality that however bright and strong
man may be to day, however much he
may exult in life, there is, after all, only
thread that holds him to existence,
which is liable any moment to be broken.
The frat thing that will be noticed is
an odor of apfiseptics. Then the operat.
ing table will be seen rolling after some
patient or carrying some patient back
from the operating room. There is every
conceivable form of wound under treat
ment, every form of disease, every devel.
opment of deformity. There is light
of hope on some faces there is look of
suffering on many other faces on others
there is that quiet look of despair which
comes when q poor wretch knows that he
is beyond the relief of either medicine or
surgery. Here is a man starving to
death because of cancer which has
closed to him the capacity of taking and
assimilatipg food; here is woman swol.
len with the dropsy and gaspiug with the
heart diseased; here is child with de-
formed feet; here is a man who was
strong three weeks ago, but who has un-
dergone the operation of amputation of q
limb at the hip joint; here are others
whose bodies have been explored for tu.
mors others delirous with fever; little
child, with a beautiful face, lies mute
and helpless under hip disease. There
is no end to the catalogue. Some troubles
come from accidents, some from expos
ure; some from the breaking down of the
vital forces. As there is no end to the
diseases, there is no end to causes. 1t is
phantom, ghostly crowd. The nurses
move around mechanically; the sur.
geons without emotion, apparently per-
form their work. Whatever of human
sympathy they feel they have to keep it
in the back ground. They whisper hope
while there is hope, and where there is
none they tell their patients monstrous
lies for which they will get credit in some
other world if not in this, because it is
iusti6able to soothe the downward path
of q dying man by any deception, any
hypocrisy, any subterfuge.
As the shoemaker pegs away on his
last all the day, as the merchant vends
his wares from early dawn to eve, as the
mason builds his wall, and as the editor
spins out his inaccuracies, so those ply
sioians, surgeons and nurses all day and
all night go their rounds. And when
sne goes and looks over the list of all the
patients that have been in the great in
stitution for half dozen years sees the
record of names, the residences, tho
cause of their coming to the hospital,
and the results, he more than ever real
ICES what work a physicians and sur
geons work is, what life nurses must
be, and over ali how endless is the train
of ills that seek relief in such an institu'
tion. The proud man grows humble;
the avaracious man, at least for q mo-
rnent, realizes that let him build up as he
pleases his pyramid of wealth, it will not
last him but a little while; the healthy
man realizes that tomorrow or next
week he may be like any of the others
whose wan faces he has been watching
and so the everlasting procession goes on
and at the best poor mortality is pitia-
BILE humbug.
Still, not quite all humbug There
are miracles being performed nowadays
in surgery. Diseases are treated now
successfully in ninety cases in hundred
where ninety out of the hundred died be-
fore apmsthetics were discovered and
before an.iseptic treatment was adopted.
With each SUCCESS the surgeon became
boder, and now operations are being
daily successfully performed that the
whole profession would have shrunk,
paralyzed, before fifty years ago; and
this complicated machine called tho
human body, in the hands of successful
surgeon, can be about half disposed of
and still retain the glori6ed life within
it. But that does not prevent mere
scratch from killing man that does
not prevent the coming of insidious dis
eases, the very first appearance of which
is notice that the patient is doomed.
So walk through the great hospital
ought to beat down in any breast any
thought Of pride or sel6shness, for it
brings swift realization of hew much
the human family is suffering and what
a pretty hold man has at best no matter
how strong or how rich man may be,