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ers took this in turn; it lasted three days, during which they
lived in hospital and ate their meals in the common-room;
they had a room on the ground floor near the casualty ward,
with a bed that shut up during the day into a cupboard. The
dresser on duty had to be at hand day and night to see to
any casualty that came in. You were on the move all the
time, and not more than an hour or two passed during
the night without the clanging of the bell just above your
head which made you leap out of bed instinctively. Satur-
day night was of course the busiest time and the closing of
the public-houses the busiest hour. Men would be brought
in by the police dead drunk and it would be necessary to
administer a stomach-pump; women, rather the worse for
liquor themselves, would come in with a wound on the
head or a bleeding nose which their husbands had given
them: some would vow to have the law on him, and oth-
ers, ashamed, would declare that it had been an accident.
What the dresser could manage himself he did, but if there
was anything important he sent for the house-surgeon: he
did this with care, since the house-surgeon was not vastly
pleased to be dragged down five flights of stairs for noth-
ing. The cases ranged from a cut finger to a cut throat. Boys
came in with hands mangled by some machine, men were
brought who had been knocked down by a cab, and chil-
dren who had broken a limb while playing: now and then
attempted suicides were carried in by the police: Philip saw
a ghastly, wild-eyed man with a great gash from ear to ear,
and he was in the ward for weeks afterwards in charge of
a constable, silent, angry because he was alive, and sullen;

0 Of Human Bondage