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hen they returned to London Philip began his dressing
Win the surgical wards. He was not so much interested
in surgery as in medicine, which, a more empirical science,
offered greater scope to the imagination. The work was a lit-
tle harder than the corresponding work on the medical side.
There was a lecture from nine till ten, when he went into
the wards; there wounds had to be dressed, stitches taken
out, bandages renewed: Philip prided himself a little on his
skill in bandaging, and it amused him to wring a word of
approval from a nurse. On certain afternoons in the week
there were operations; and he stood in the well of the theatre,
in a white jacket, ready to hand the operating surgeon any
instrument he wanted or to sponge the blood away so that
he could see what he was about. When some rare operation
was to be performed the theatre would fill up, but generally
there were not more than half a dozen students present, and
then the proceedings had a cosiness which Philip enjoyed.
At that time the world at large seemed to have a passion for
appendicitis, and a good many cases came to the operat-
ing theatre for this complaint: the surgeon for whom Philip
dressed was in friendly rivalry with a colleague as to which
could remove an appendix in the shortest time and with the
smallest incision.
In due course Philip was put on accident duty. The dress-