The lady complied. Carefully adjusting his gold eye-glasses, he would minutely inspect it.
"Did I understand you to say you were a strict teetotaler?"
"No, sir, I am not exactly that: but it's little I ever touch except a glass of beer with my dinner."
Dr. Stanforth would take off his glasses, carefully wipe them with his handkerchief, and readjust them.
"Permit me to see your tongue again, madam. Um--ah--h--h." Then, after looking at the organ closely for some moments, he would ask, incredulously--
"I said very seldom, doctor--never more than a teaspoonful of brandy in a little water the last thing at night. You know you told I might do that last time I was here."
"One teaspoonful, madam?" with another scrutiny of the tongue; "only _one_ teaspoonful of brandy?"
"That is all, sir," said the patient, bridling up and getting restive.
Dr. Stanforth took off his glasses, folded them, and leaning back in his chair, asked in his blandest tones, "Pray, where do you procure your brandy? It must be very strong. I can get none so good!"
The woman would bear no more roasting that day, and having taken her prescription, left the room, the assembled students heartily enjoying her discomfiture.
The way to annoy him and put him on his mettle was for a lady patient to object to an examination in the presence of his very large class of students.
"Well, sir, I do not like to undergo all this before these young gentlemen."
"Would you like your eldest to be a great physician when he grows up?"
"Oh, yes, indeed I should, if he were clever enough!"
"I thought so. Now all these young gentlemen's mammas have the same desire, and have sent them to me for that purpose. If you don't help them, they can't learn to be doctors. Now, nurse, assist this lady to undress." And, without sparing the poor creature a pang of shame, he would submit her to a degrading ordeal, so that every one of his boys might have the chance of learning that for which, as he said, "they have paid large sums of money."
To amuse them and impress them with the idea of his wit, he would, in the presence of patient and nurses, often tell shady stories as broad as they were long. Such droll scenes, such lively contests between one weak, suffering woman (for he would never permit a patient to bring mother or friend into his room), and this brilliant physician and his admiring, tittering pupils, made the gynæcological out-patients' days the great fun of the place. "Beats Punch into fits!" said Murphy. "Never half as much spree at the play!" vowed Robins. But it was poor spree and very mitigated fun to the hundreds of afflicted creatures who sought this great doctor's aid; for great he was and very skilful, and had saved many thousands of sufferers from pain and discomfort. He was a generous, patient, useful man, and in his private practice was everything that could be desired in a doctor; but he thought, and that thoroughly, that he was at St. Bernard's first to interest and teach in the completest manner all the men who attended his classes. If in this doctor-factory any sick woman could avail herself of the by-product or waste for her cure or relief, she was heartily welcome. In any case, her attendance served his purpose very well indeed--unless she became troublesome, and refused to comply with some of his too outrageous demands, and then her letter would be taken from her, and marked by the doctor "_Refuses treatment_," and she would be escorted out of the hospital by one of the nurses.