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their legs and preferred to give the medicines which they
had all ready, the good hospital mixtures which had been
found by the experience of years to answer their purpose so
well, he amused himself by writing an elaborate prescrip-
tion.
‘We’ll give the dispenser something to do. If we go on
prescribing mist: alb: he’ll lose his cunning.’
The students laughed, and the doctor gave them a circu-
lar glance of enjoyment in his joke. Then he touched the bell
and, when the porter poked his head in, said:
‘Old women, please.’
He leaned back in his chair, chatting with the H.P. while
the porter herded along the old patients. They came in,
strings of anaemic girls, with large fringes and pallid lips,
who could not digest their bad, insufficient food; old ladies,
fat and thin, aged prematurely by frequent confinements,
with winter coughs; women with this, that, and the other,
the matter with them. Dr. Tyrell and his house-physician
got through them quickly. Time was getting on, and the air
in the small room was growing more sickly. The physician
looked at his watch.
‘Are there many new women today?’ he asked.
‘A good few, I think,’ said the H.P.
‘We’d better have them in. You can go on with the old
ones.’
They entered. With the men the most common ailments
were due to the excessive use of alcohol, but with the wom-
en they were due to defective nourishment. By about six
o’clock they were finished. Philip, exhausted by standing all