A kind porter in the place let her sit down in his room and await the result. Before nightfall, she was a widow. The announcement was made to her by one of the dressers, who coupled his bad news with a request from the authorities for leave to make a _post-mortem_ examination. For James Green had yet something to contribute to science and St. Bernard's; he had given his life; had presented a rising young surgeon with his first opportunity for a great and interesting operation. He had still something more to bestow--his dead body. It was considered a grievous oversight, and a wrong to the institution, if a patient who had died there failed to make his or her appearance on the _post-mortem_ table at four o'clock the next day, not only that it might be seen and demonstrated by skilled pathologists just where and how the operation had gone wrong, but for the sake of all the beautiful and instructive things that might be shown in brain, or heart, or lungs. For statistical purposes, for treatises being written, for papers for learned societies on all and every of the ailments of humanity, it was ill fortune to let a _sectio cadaveris_ slip, as one never knew what one might be losing. They had an euphemistic way of asking the relatives' permission for what they termed a "P.M."
"You don't object to a slight examination, do you, just to find out the real cause of death, so as to make the death certificate all right?"
Who could object? Few understood what it all meant, fewer thought they had any power to object; so the cases were rare where the ruse failed.
There is a widespread feeling amongst the people against _post-mortem_ examinations. There is a vague apprehension that portions of their deceased friend's anatomy may appear "in spirits in a vial," in some museum or other. When the remains of the relative come back from the hospital, it is unpleasant to feel doubts as to their integrity. Visions of important portions of their internal economy lying _perdu_ in back gardens of students' lodgings, the prey of the too inquisitive cat or investigating terrier, are not altogether baseless. Hundreds of back gardens in London doubtless do contain such material, as we have frequent proof. Many thousands of museum shelves are loaded with preparations of such departed friends. It is doubtless, in the abstract, absurd to object to these common practices; but when it comes home to a mother to ask how she would like her dead child's remains disposed of, it is perfectly natural, and not at all absurd, to suppose that with her whole heart, she would earnestly demand that they should be reverently interred in Christian ground, and be as little mutilated as possible.