A silent witness
unchanged through the ages with no tendency to diminish or to shade
off into one another. That is a case of Mendelian inheritance.”
I ran my eyes over the collection and they presently lighted on the
rather abnormal-looking foot, hanging, white and shrivelled in the
clear spirit. I lifted the jar from the table and then, noticing for
the first time, that the foot had a supernumerary toe, I enquired what
point the specimen illustrated.
“That six-toed foot,” Thorndyke replied, “is an example of a deformity
that is transmitted unchanged for an indefinite number of generations.
This brachy-dactylous hand is another instance. The brachy-dactylia
reappears in the offspring either completely or not at all. There are
no intermediate conditions.”
He picked up the jar, and, having wiped the glass with a duster,
exhibited the hand which was suspended within; and a strange-looking
hand it was; broad and stumpy, like the hand of a mole.
“There seem to be only two joints to each finger,” I said.
“Yes. The fingers are all thumbs, and the thumb is only a demi-thumb.
A joint is suppressed in each digit.”
“It must make the hand very clumsy and useless,” I remarked.
“So one would think. It isn’t exactly the type of hand for a Liszt or
a Paganini. And yet we mustn’t assume too much. I once saw an armless
man copying pictures in the Luxembourg, and copying them very well,
too. He held his brush with his toes; and he was so handy with his
feet that he not only painted really dextrously, but managed to take
his hat off to a lady with quite a fine flourish. So you see, Jardine,
it is not the hand that matters, but rather the brain that actuates
it. A very indifferent hand will serve if the motor centres are of the
right sort.”
He replaced the jar on the table, and then, after a short pause,
turning quickly to me, he asked:
“What are you doing at present, Jardine?”
“Principally idling, sir,” I replied.
“And not a bad thing to do either,” he rejoined with a smile, “if you
do it thoroughly and don’t keep it up too long. How would you like to
take charge of a practice for a week or so?”
“I don’t know that I should particularly care to, sir,” I answered.
“Why not? It would be a useful experience and would bring you useful
knowledge; knowledge that you have got to acquire sooner or later.
Hospital conditions, you know, are not normal conditions.
“General practice is normal medical practice, and the sooner you get
to know the conditions of the great world the better for you. If you
stick to the wards too long you will get to be like the nurses; who
seem to think that,
“‘All the world’s a hospital,
And men and women only patients.’”
I reflected for a few moments. It was perfectly true. I was a
qualified medical man, and yet of the ordinary routine of private
practice I had not the faintest knowledge. To me, all sick people were
either in-patients or out-patients.
“Had you any particular practice in your mind, sir?” I asked.
“Yes. I met one of our old students just now. He is at his wit’s end
to find a _locum tenens_. He has to go away to-night or to-morrow
morning, but he can’t get anyone to look after his work. Won’t you go
to his relief? It’s an easy practice, I believe.”
I turned the question over in my mind and finally decided to try the
venture.
“That’s right,” said Dr. Thorndyke. “You’ll help a professional
brother, at any rate, and pick up a little experience. Our friend’s
name is Batson, and he lives in Jacob Street, Hampstead Road. I’ll
write it down.”
He handed me a slip of paper with the address on it and wished me
success; and I started at once from the hospital, already quite
elated, as is the way of the youthful, at the prospect of a new
experience.
Dr. Batson’s establishment in Jacob Street was modest to the verge of
dingyness. But Jacob Street, itself, was dingy, and so was the
immediate neighbourhood; a district of tall, grimy houses that might
easily have seen better days. However, Dr. Batson himself was spruce
enough and in excellent spirits at my arrival, as was evident when he
bounced into the room with a jovial greeting, bringing in with him a
faint aroma of sherry.
“Delighted to see you, Doctor!” he exclaimed in his large brisk voice
(that “doctor” was a diplomatic hit on his part. They don’t call
newly-qualified men “doctor” at the hospital.) “I met Thorndyke this
morning and told him of my predicament. A busy man is the Great
Unraveller, but never too busy to do a kindness to his friends. Can
you take over to-night?”
“I could,” said I.
“Then do. I want particularly to be off by the eight-thirty from
Liverpool Street. Drop in and have some grub about six-thirty; I shall
have polished off the day’s work by then and you’ll just come in for
the evening consultations.”
“Are there any cases that you will want me to see with you?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Batson replied, rather airily I thought. “They’re all plain
sailing. There’s a typhoid, he’s doing well--fourth week; and there’s
a tonsilitis and a psoas abscess--that’s rather tedious, but still,
it’s improving--and an old woman with a liver. You won’t have any
difficulty with them. There’s only one queer case; a heart.”
“Valvular?” I asked.
“No, not valvular; I can tell you that much. I know what it isn’t, but
I’m hanged if I know what it is. Chappie complains of pain, shortness
of breath, faintness and so on, but I can’t find anything to account
for it. Heart-sounds all right, pulse quite good, no dropsy, no
nothing. Seems like malingering, but I don’t see why he should
malinger. I think I’ll get you to drop in this evening and have a look
at him.”
“Are you keeping him in bed?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Batson, “I am now; not that his general condition seems to
demand it. But he has had one or two fainting attacks, and yesterday
he must needs fall down flop in his bedroom when there was nobody
there, and, by way of making things more comfortable, he drops his
medicine bottle and falls on the fragments. He might have killed
himself, you know,” Batson added in an aggrieved tone; “as it was, a
long splinter from the bottom of the bottle stuck into his back and
made quite a deep little wound. So I’ve kept him in bed since, out of
harm’s way; and there he is, deuced sorry for himself but, as far as I
can make out, without a single tangible symptom.”
“No facial signs? Nothing unusual in his colour or expression?”
Batson laughed and tapped his gold-rimmed spectacles.
“Ah! There you are! When you’ve got minus five d and some irregular
astigmatism and a pair of glasses that don’t correct it, all human
beings look pretty much alike; a trifle sketchy, don’t you know. _I_
didn’t see anything unusual in his face, but _you_ might. Time will
show. Now you cut along and fetch your traps, and I’ll skip round and
polish off the sufferers.”
He launched me into the outer greyness of Jacob Street and bounced off
in the direction of Cumberland Market, leaving me to pursue my way to
my lodgings at Gospel Oak.
As I threaded the teeming streets of Camden Town I meditated on the
new experience that was opening to me, and, with youthful egotism, I
already saw myself making a brilliant diagnosis of an obscure heart
case. Also I reflected with some surprise on the calm view that Batson
took of his defective eyesight. A certain type of painter, as I had
observed, finds in semi-blindness a valuable gift which helps him to
eliminate trivial detail and to impart a noble breadth of effect to
his pictures; but to a doctor no such self-delusion would seem
possible. Visual acuteness is the most precious item in his equipment.
I crammed into a large Gladstone bag the bare necessaries for a week’s
stay, together with a few indispensable instruments, and then mounted
the jingling horse-tram of those pre-electric days, which, in due
course, deposited me at the end of Jacob Street, Hampstead Road. Dr.
Batson had not returned from his round when I arrived, but a few
minutes later he burst into the surgery humming an air from “The
Mikado.”
“Ha! Here you are then! Punctual to the minute!” He hung his hat on a
peg, laid his visiting-list on the desk of the dispensing counter and
began to compound medicine with the speed of a prestidigitateur,
talking volubly all the time.
“That’s for the old woman with the liver, Mrs. Mudge, Cumberland
Market, you’ll see her prescription in the day book. S’pose you don’t
know how to wrap up a bottle of medicine. Better watch me. This is the
way.” He slapped the bottle down on a square of cut paper, gave a few
dextrous twiddles of his fingers and held out for my inspection a
little white parcel like the mummy-case of a deceased medicine bottle.
“It’s quite easy when you’ve had a little practice,” he said, deftly
sticking the ends down with sealing-wax, “but you’ll make a frightful
mucker of it at first.” Which prophecy was duly fulfilled that very
evening.
“What time had I better see that heart case?” said I.
“Oh, you won’t have to see it at all. Man’s dead. Message left half an
hour ago. Pity, isn’t it? I should have liked to hear what you thought
of him. Must have been fatty heart. I’ll write out the certificate
while I think of it. Maggie! Where’s that note that Mrs. Samway left?”
The question was roared out vaguely through the open door to a servant
of unknown whereabouts, and resulted in the appearance of a somewhat
scraggy housemaid bearing an opened note.
“Here we are,” said Batson, snatching the note out of its envelope and
opening the book of certificate forms; “Septimus Maddock was the
chappie’s name, age fifty-one, address 23, Gayton Street, cause of
death--that’s just what I should like to know--primary cause,
secondary causes--I wish these infernal government clerks had got
something better to do than fill printed forms with silly conundrums.
I shall put “Morbus Cordis”; that ought to be enough for them. Mrs.
Samway--that’s his landlady, you know--will probably call for the
certificate during the evening.”
“Aren’t you going to inspect the body?” I asked.
“Lord, no! Why should I! It isn’t necessary, you know. I’m not an
undertaker. Wish I was. Dead people good deal more profitable than
live ones.”
“But surely,” I exclaimed, “the death ought to be verified. Why the
man may not be dead at all.”
“I know,” said Batson, scribbling away like a minor poet, “but that
isn’t my business. Business of the Law. Law wastes your time with a
heap of silly questions that don’t matter and leaves out the question
that does. Asks exact time when I last saw him alive, which doesn’t
matter a hang, and doesn’t ask whether I saw him dead. Bumble was
right. Law’s an ass.”
“But still,” I persisted, “leaving the legal requirements out of
consideration, oughtn’t you for your own sake, and as a public duty,
to verify the death? Supposing the man were not really dead?”
“That would be awkward for him,” said Batson, “and awkward for me,
too, if he came to life before they buried him. But it doesn’t really
happen in real life. Premature burial only occurs in novels.”
His easy-going confidence jarred on me considerably. How could he, or
anyone else, know what happened?
“I don’t see how you arrive at that,” I objected. “It could only be
proved by wholesale disinterment. And the fact remains that, if you
don’t verify a reported death you have no security against premature
burial--or even cremation.”
Batson started up and stared at me, his wide-open, pale-blue eyes
looking ridiculously small through his deep, concave spectacles.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I am glad you mentioned that--about
cremation, I mean, because that is what will probably happen. I
witnessed the chappie’s will a couple of days ago, and I remember now