A. W. Sanders is now attached to No. 3 General Hospital, Kronstadt, and has had a very warm time of it. We give a short extract from a letter of his, describing the affair at Bothaville.

"A few days ago, at Bothaville, we had some hard fighting. On the afternoon of the 5th, our men made a reconnaissance towards the town, and were heavily fired on by some Boer guns which had been placed in a concealed position, and refrained from opening fire until our men were within close range. Fortunately but few of ours

were

hit. I had not before had any experience of shell fire, and even then was not very close. It was decidedly unpleasant.

That night we crossed the drift in the "Valsch" and camped on the south bank, on the hills where the Boers had had their guns.

Getting but three hours' sleep we started at dawn and followed the track of the Boers. About two miles from camp our advance guard captured a Boer outpost and discovered the Boer laager. The enemy being quite unprepared, many of them took flight, including Steyn and De Wet. We closed on those that remained and occupied a farmhouse overlooking the laager. The Boers lined the wall of a garden and kept up a very hot rifle fire on our men, but were most fortunately unable, because of the severity of our own shell fire, to work their guns. I spent the morning attending to our wounded commanding officer, lying on the floor of the house. The bullets were coming in fast through the windows and scattering the plaster from the walls over us. We were safe, provided you kept down, and the enemy could not get their big guns to bear on us. It was a most anxious time for us all, but in the end we came off victorious, fortunately having support at hand, but had this failed we should, I fear, have had a bad time. We lost heavily, especially in officers. You will probably have read some account of the fight.

Brincker, Hatch, and Skevington are at

For what they received from South Africa, we hope our readers are truly thankful.

Yet another cryptic sentence :"The young people were left together, and we hear that they have come to a perfectly favourable understanding. We think the moth will be more careful 'ere he venture

quite so near the flame again."

This reads to us like an extract from a "curtain raiser."

Our physicians have introduced a novel method of teaching in our midst, which we consider most attractive. They point the moral of a case by an adaptation of crisp popular sayings to their scientific purposes. For example, one of our most learned ones, after auscultating a chest in dead silence for half-an-hour, rose up and said, "There's air." That's all he said, only that; wasn't it neat?

Our next duty is to turn our attention to the epidemics.

The outbreak of arsenical neuritis is still attracting attention, and even now some gentlemen believe there is an element of Beri-Beri in the outbreak. How strange it must appear to the laity that there should be any difficulty in distinguishing between BeriBeri and Beeri-Beeri. Quite easy, they think, no doubt.

We congratulate Mr. Linnington on the occasion of his marriage to Miss Nina Sims, and Mr. Bingley upon his marriage to Miss Ruth Oliver.

Also Mr. A. York St. Leger on his marriage with Miss Edith Hughman, which took place on January 12th.

When we find a young gentleman at 9.30 a.m. sitting in the library, with far away eyes fixed upon the ceiling, and a book of poetry upon his knees, and when as we pass him he murmurs, "faint but pursuing," we suspect. Cheer up, poor Corydon! "It's a

Lord Roberts was late. The rumour passed that he was being addressed by the magnates of the Borough of Paddington. The crowd said things about Sir John Aird. The crowd was impatient-did not even chaff the police. We waited an hour; suddenly the troops were called to attention!" The Prince and Princess of Wales came first, and were heartily cheered; they were followed by the Duke and Duchesse of York, and then we waited a quarter of an

At last we heard a roar of cheering in the distance, and again the men came to 'attention.' It was really Lord Roberts this time, and he had an ovation such as no man ever had before. People went half-mad with excitement, and roared like the bull of Bashan as their hero went by. It was a sight indeed to see the little man in the carriage, whom half London had turned out to see, looking so well after the work of the last year. We all wish him success in his task of giving us an army for the next

emergency.

It is a sad thought, a very sad one, to feel that the Editor cannot leave town to sit for a while in solemn conclave with the Druids under the Oaks, without finding his staff running riot. Two erstwhile respectable gentlemen, who call themselves understudies,' have evidently over-eaten themselves.

We do not object to that, they may eat more than they like, as they have done no doubt, of turkey, beef, plum pudding, candied fruits, mince pies, oranges, chestnuts, etc., etc., etc., but they must eat fair, and not swallow the crackers and their mottoes. In no other way can we explain some of their writings. Ah, well! boys will be boys,

bless their innocent hearts.

The medical student is a simple-minded chap, in spite of the virulent and rather hysterical attack made upon him in the Free Lance by some lady whose name we forget, and have no desire to remember.

This incident will serve to prove our point. There has been snow recently in London, and the medical student, mindful of the poet who wrote:

"Oh the whether! Blow the whether!
It upsets us altogether;

But weather it's cold, or weather it's hot,
We must whether it weather or not!"

(difficult lines to spell!) made the best of it by pelting the hungry Editor seeking his

We had an old umbrella, with gaps midway betwixt the wires, so elevating it, and showing a glimpse of a top hat, we ventured. A terrible scene ensued, and, thank heavens, a hard shot burst the cover to smithereens. Five minutes afterwards a repentant voice in the Club petitioned us to get it re-covered. We said, in such a winning way, "it is not all silk, and is not quite so good as it looks."

Now we stride down Harley Street and do what we have not done for months, put up the umbrella. Ha! Ha! He is a simple, minded chap, and no match for ingenui vultus puer.

We thank Mr. F. H. Madden, our late School Secretary, for his defence of the Medical Student in the Free Lance, not for the defence though, there is no need for that, but for his kind recollection of us all.

Ingenui Vultus, etc., reminds us that we owe an apology to Dr. Cheadle for making an error in the last number, and printing the words "Obiter dicta" as "Obiter dictu." We blame, of course, our Anæsthetist, the Printer's Devil, though the oversight was our

own.

Civil Surgeon Dr. E. H. Nathan left South Africa on December 6th, in the Manhattan.

Mr. Ernest Manning has been appointed Junior Assistant House Surgeon, to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, Exeter.

The Rugby Football XV. have drawn against Guy's in the First Round of the Inter-Hospital matches. A big job for them, but good luck! The date for the match is January 24th.

We come next to the Nursing Depart

ment.

Miss A. E. Joscelyne has resigned her position as Sister of the New Boynton Ward, and remains in the Army Nursing Service. She is now taking duty in a military hospital

Sister Joscelyne, whose name is well known among us, her brother having been one of our students, has been connected with St. Mary's since February, 1893, and leaves with much regret. The Hospital, by her resignation, loses a conscientious and loyal officer.

Her vacant post has been filled by Miss Mabella Annie Banks, who has been taking Sister's duties in New Boynton Ward during Sister Joscelyne's absence in South Africa.

Sister Thistlethwayte, Miss Bindloss, returned from South Africa in December with convalescent patients on the hospital ship— Simla-and left again at the end of December for South Africa in the same ship.

Sister Lewis-Loyd, Miss MacAdam, is working among enteric cases at Pretoria, and Sister Albert, at Bloemfontein.

Sister Charleson, who recovered from a severe attack of enteric fever, after going through the seige of Ladysmith, is again at work in the Field Hospital, Charlestown, Natal.

Mr. E. R. Clarke has been appointed House Physician to Dr. Lees.

Mr. W. V. Shaw, M.B., B.C. (Oxon), has been re-appointed Curator of the Museum, and Assistant-Pathologist for a further period of three months, vice Dr. Dodgson, on leave in South Africa.

A further extension of leave has also been granted to Messrs. Sanders and Lowe. Mr. W. H. Clayton-Greene will continue to act as Demonstrator of Anatomy, and Mr. A. Garrick Wilson, M.B., B.C. (Cantab), has been appointed for three months.

We have to thank Mr. O. M. Bartlett-or rather, our readers have to thank him-for the picture which is reproduced in this number of the GAZETTE. The photograph was taken at very short notice, and under most disadvantageous conditions, and we think it does him great credit. What say you, gentle

Thoughts about the Museum.

By An Ex-CURATOR.

As a student I am afraid I did not trouble the museum much, but acted on the principle that anatomy is learnt in the dissecting room and morbid anatomy in the P.M. room; not so much, perhaps, for the sake of the principle as because in the former case it seemed far easier to learn from your own dissections than from those ready made, and in the second that there was no method of preparation (modern methods have somewhat modified the difference since) that would shew morbid changes as seen in the fresh tissues; since, too, the best pathological specimen, howsoever beautifully dissected, lacks the significance of its original surroundings and recent clinical associations.

I still place the museum in a very subordinate place as a school, as I suppose most of us do, but I trust that I see better than I did then the special advantages it offers as illustration of clinical work and reading. To some extent every worker must be a law to himself and of using the museum.

"There are nine and sixty ways

And every single one of them is right."

Of abusing it there are equally numerous methods. There are, for instance, dainty youths who consider the post mortem room too noisome an abode and nourish the delusion that a lounge in the museum is work. They may often be seen hunting for horrors like yokels at a village fair. "Oh, I say, just look at this! Look out No. 1468 Z in the catalogue. And they smoke on in placid enjoyment of that other anencephalous mortal, who grins back at them from his bottle. These be they that are delivered at the examination hall of abortive ideas, and find themselves with an appropriate nine months allotted them wherein to qualify their opinions for an independent existence.

Some men, again, waste time by trying to get through too many specimens. Fifty or sixty in an hour is a very modest pace for such. "Liver, shewing hydatid cyst." Good! there's the liver, and that's the cyst. Next, please. It is only the more difficult specimens, such as probably necessitate turning the jar upside down, that give them pause.

And yet

there are many specimens (take as one instance out of many Mr. Pepper's dissection of a popliteal aneurysm) which might provide food for thought even for a whole quarter of an hour. The mistake often arises from going into the museum as a terra incognita without any previous study to bring to bear upon what they find there. As my tutor taught me when I began microscopic work:-"If you don't know what you're looking for, you'll be a precious long time finding it." To which I may add that it is quite difficult enough when you do know.

And this leads me to mention the difficulty that more than any other, discouraged me in early visits to the museum, that of identifying in the older specimens the details set forth in the catalogue description. We

that of the great names they recall. Time and methylated spirit have wrought so great a change in them that our admiration for them as specimens would be very like that of Artemus Ward for the spot at Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare, when a little boy, had fallen down and hurt himself on the ice. Yet have I known the eye of faith see wonders in them. But most of us fail to see detail for the same reason that Tilburina could not see the Spanish fleet, "because it is not in sight." Requiescat in pace. They were brave specimens once, but do not waste time over them now. In the majority of cases, however, I and my fellow-sufferers would rightly trace our difficulty to our ignorance of morbid anatomy. What is difficult to see in the fresh specimen is usually still more difficult to see when the colour has departed; and this is a difficulty which we shall probably still have to put up with till we have those specimens only in which the colour of the tissues is preserved as bright as life and twice as natural, a state of things which we seem in a fair way of obtaining.

The museum has its special dangers, amongst these its formality; and disease is seldom or never formal. In memory a student comes up to me with a specimen of cancer of the breast and asks, "Is it typical ?" One is inclined to wish there were no such word. I remember a worthy practitioner who took notes as he went round the wards with one of the staff, and when leaving the bedside of a case of pneumonia with symptoms of heart failure, solemnly made the note, "Pneumonia. Tinct. digitalis, 3x, ammon. carb., gr. v, aq. chlorof., 3i, 4 tis. ;" and I make no doubt from my knowledge of him fired it off at the next case of pneumonia he treated. Of like nature is the snare of "typical" specimens it is a vain seeking after the geometrical symmetry of the pons asinorum. For examination purposes, system there must be, facts neatly and concisely arranged in bundles; but later on the mind that thinks on these principles and is their slave must be satisfied with occasional glimpses of the obvious. Again, to take several similar specimens and endeavour to trace points of difference as well as of agreement, to form, where the printed description allows of it, some rough conception of what the lesion meant to the patient and those who attended him, is a more intellectual process than the satisfaction of the frequent prayer. "Give me some specimens to spot." And those who prefer their mental pabulum highly peptonised and who, like Mr. Mantalini, are always crying "Dem!" and have 66 never thought of thinking for themselves at all," let them beware of this state of intellectual parasitism on the brains of others. I have known it become permanent, resulting in subsequent private practices where all the correct diagnoses are made during the annual holiday. If men like this would but read up at home the diseases on which they have to take notes, read carefully, that is, and not with a view to the common silly boast, "I read sixty pages of Walsham last night," they would find useful help in the museum without any demonstrator to wet-nurse their lazy minds.

In contrast to these there is yet another type of man whom one meets in hospital and school-the

others do not, and for whom common knowledge has no attraction. He can tell you all the communications of the superior cervical ganglion, but not the insertion of the gluteus maximus, and reads up yaws in preference to measles. For a man of this kind a "spotting dem "(I hope a glossary is not needed) in the museum with a moderately large class is the very best treatment. A skilful demonstrator can fairly let the sawdust out of his well-padded self-conceit in streams, and if he can be made to display his ignorance palpably and often, he may yet save his soul alive. I remember one such who, for lack of such treatment in the museum or elsewhere, so made it a point to "dem" to staff and students alike that he was discharged incurable. His end was pieces.

These are, I am aware, very discursive remarks, and are indeed intended as rough notes by the way to indicate some of the pitfalls into which I and others have fallen, in order that those who are inclined to take them for gold mines may hereafter avoid them.

The Beginning of the Century.

A PSYCHICAL AURA.

Snow had been falling all night and through the early part of the morning, but at noon the wind rose and rapidly dispersed the grey clouds, leaving the sky clear, except for a few stately snow pillars of purest white. It was the last day of the Old Year and of the Century, so, when the snow had ceased, we started off to revisit some of our old and favourite haunts.

Climbing on to the Down, we wandered across the battlefield of Lansdowne, and read once more the quaint and expressive words of Clarendon upon the monument erected to Sir Bevil Granville, the leader of the Royalist forces.

"In this battle," writes Clarendon, 66 were more officers and gentlemen of quality slain than private men but that which would have clouded any victory, and made the loss of others less spoken of was the death of Sir Bevil Granville."

Here, around us, lay the graves of loyal Cornishmen who had fallen in this struggle with Waller and his Roundheads. There, at the summit of the hill, at the foot of which Sir Bevil had fallen mortally wounded, stands the grey monument in sombre isolation. Then we descended the hill and walked on to the picturesque manor house, to which he was carried, and where he died.

On our return it commenced to freeze, and the country was a wonderful sight. Miles of glistering white lay beneath us lighted by the brilliant stars. The crisp snow crunched under our footsteps, and the wind, moaning through the firs, shook from their boughs large masses of frozen snow, which fell to the ground with a dull thud, and left behind them a cloud of white dust.

The dark outlines of the Mendips were just visible in the far distance, on the right the City of Bristol lay hidden beneath a canopy of smoke, and deep in the

Just as we reach the brow of the Down the moon rose, and added the touch of perfection to this scene. For a while we lived in Fairyland, and as we crossed the old Roman road, it would have seemed quite natural to have heard the tramp of the Roman legions, and to have watched them march along the Via Julia, which runs straight as a plummet-line over hill and dale to the river Severn.

Later in the evening we did what thousands were doing-closed round the fire, piled up the logs, and waited for midnight. The wind had dropped, the night was perfectly calm and still. So throwing up the window, we listened for the dull sound of the cannon from the Bristol, and for the splendid peal of Somersetshire bells that would welcome in the New Year. All at once, as if impelled by an unseen Power, we rose, left the room, crept along the creaking passages of the old house, opened the front door and stood out upon the lawn. The whole landscape, in breathless silence, lay white and glittering before us. At length a faint rustle attracted our attention, and looking down, we saw a small girl-child of marvellous beauty, clad in a pale blue cloak. We could see the exquisite symmetry of her tiny hands and feet, but her face was slightly turned away, and hidden by masses of golden hair. None dared to speak or break the silence, until the child turned, and raising a pair of laughing eyes, exclaimed :

"I wish you all a Happy New Year !"

Then she vanished, and the faint music of the bells from across the Avon whispered to us that the New Century had commenced.

Christmas in Hospital.

The Hospital looked very cheerful this Christmas. The decorations consisted, in the main, of evergreens, though flags and Chinese lanterns were allowed when they could be got at and disinfected. We missed the usual decorations put up of late years by Messrs. Whiteley, in Thistle, but this ward, and Manvers, made a brave show of green. The children's wards were very pretty, the De Hirsch cots being draped in red and white, and Crawshay in green and white, in harmony with the rest of the ward. Lilian Holland, as usual, looked very gay, as did Alexandra and Prince's, while Victoria and Albert on the medical floor, and Lewis Loyd and Allcroft below, were as good as any. Every ward had a distinctive feature, and the Sisters in each had ample excuse for thinking their's the prettiest in the Hospital. For our own part, we thought-but perhaps we had better not say what we thought.

All the men who were well enough (and the boys, for that matter) were given an ounce of tobacco and a pipe, and were permitted to smoke within the sacred precincts on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. This allowance was eked out by cigarettes distributed by the House-men, and it did one good to see the men enjoying themselves round the fires. The Residents, too, and Dressers on duty, were not slow to avail themselves of the license.