Page 653 - of-human-bondage-
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agnosis, and then waited for Dr. Tyrell to come in. This he
            did, followed by a small crowd of students, when he had fin-
           ished the men, and the clerk read out what he had learned.
           The physician asked him one or two questions, and exam-
           ined the patient himself. If there was anything interesting
           to hear students applied their stethoscope: you would see a
           man with two or three to the chest, and two perhaps to his
            back, while others waited impatiently to listen. The patient
            stood among them a little embarrassed, but not altogether
            displeased  to  find  himself  the  centre  of  attention:  he  lis-
           tened confusedly while Dr. Tyrell discoursed glibly on the
            case. Two or three students listened again to recognise the
           murmur or the crepitation which the physician described,
            and then the man was told to put on his clothes.
              When the various cases had been examined Dr. Tyrell
           went back into the large room and sat down again at his
            desk. He asked any student who happened to be standing
           near him what he would prescribe for a patient he had just
            seen. The student mentioned one or two drugs.
              ‘Would you?’ said Dr. Tyrell. ‘Well, that’s original at all
            events. I don’t think we’ll be rash.’
              This always made the students laugh, and with a twin-
            kle of amusement at his own bright humour the physician
           prescribed  some  other  drug  than  that  which  the  student
           had suggested. When there were two cases of exactly the
            same sort and the student proposed the treatment which
           the physician had ordered for the first, Dr. Tyrell exercised
            considerable ingenuity in thinking of something else. Some-
           times, knowing that in the dispensary they were worked off

                                               Of Human Bondage
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