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GRAINS AND SCRUPLES
1506
GRAINS AND SCRUPLES Under this various
appear week by week the unfettered thoughts Each contributor is responsible for the section his name can be seen later in the half-yearly index
heading occupations.
FROM A CIVIL SERVANT IV " Porter ! Put my skis in the carriage with me, will you ? "-" Mine were registered through from Innsbruck, thank goodness." " Quite primitive, my dear. Just snow and Gruas Robert Gotts. Too fit-making. But the instructor ! Taylor-except that he had nicer ears." " What about a drink in the Pullman ? "-" Thanks, but tea for me after that crossing, darling. I’ll come along now ; Elise is lookin’ after our things." *
*
*
From Christmas onwards for the next three months conversations such as these can be heard at Dover Marine Station among the throngs of well-to-do English returning from that best of all holidays, winter sports in the Austrian Tirol. Through a byway of medical practice, the Medical Inspection of Aliens, I was led to discover another not so fortunate crowd of travellers from Austria who come in not for three months of the year only but every day. For the last few years 12,000 or so Austrian girls and women have entered England annually to take employment, the vast majority as domestic servants. The " servant problem " is bad enough as it is-without them it would be desperate. Soon perhaps it will be desperate in Austria ! Now how do these girls come into England and what are their nrst impressions of this country likely to be ?‘? They have been travelling-third class-for a minimum of thirty hours and often for fifty hours with two nights in the train. After a four-hour crossing from Ostend, perhaps cold and rough, they land at Dover carrying all their luggage in a large suit-case or two, they stand in a queue until they are interviewed-after the foreign business and private visitors have been seen-by the immigration officials, who, however sympathetic they may feel, must think first of the others waiting behind and sacrifice the graces to speed. The long wooden shed, draughty or stuffy according to the season, is filled with anxious worried faces trying to understand the questions put to them in a strange language. Sometimes there may be a hitch-some flaw in the papers. " There’re enough tears shed in this room to float a battleship," a sympathetic official told me. Next comes the doctor. They wait in a little room and are brought in one by one by the nurse. The doctor looks them over, feels their pulse and asks them a question or two, and occasionally selects someone for more detailed examination. Shunting trains just outside, the language difficulty, nervousness and fatigue, all contribute to the ordeal. Even when " passed " by the doctor, they cannot escape quickly. For the first time in the lives of many of them they encounter the English door-handle-a knob which must be turned-instead of the latch which is universal in Austria. Then the Customs.... Finally they emerge’on to the station to find that the boat-train has gone and they must wait for a slow " to London. Even if they had any money-most of them have none-the prices in English currency charged at the refreshment room are beyond their means. Tea they do not know and our coffee they would probably not recognise. When they do eventually arrive at Victoria any mistress who has cometo meet them on the boat-train has almost certainly faded away in despair. "
of doctors in for a month ;;
Small wonder that many of them-still with a journey perhaps to Scotland in front of them-are reported to be in a hysterical condition." "
*
*
*
What a difference it would make if a sympathetic German-speaking woman was present to meet the two daily boats on which the great majority arrive, to explain to them what was happening, to help them to catch the train and, if it was lost, to suggest how and where they could spend their time of waiting-perhaps to see them provided with hot drinks or food. The Travellers’ Aid Society have kindly consented to help in providing such a service if sufficient funds are raised by this appeal. I would ask anyone who has ever enjoyed a holiday in Austria, anyone who has
benefited from the services of an Austrian maid, anyone who would like the impressions of England carried away by deserving guests of ours to be pleasant ones, to send a contribution to the Travellers’ Aid Society, 140, Gloucester-place, N.W.I, marked " Foreign Fund." Please.... ever
THE LANCET 100 YEARS AGO December 23rd, 1837, p. 470. From an account of a plastic operation performed at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.
on
the
nose
"
Operations ", said the greatest surgeon which this ever produced, John Hunter, " are a reflection on the healing art; they are a tacit acknowledgement of its insufficiency. It is like an armed savage, who attempts to get that by force which a civilised man would get by stratagem. No surgeon should approach the victim of his operation without a sacred dread and reluctance, and should be superior to that popular éclât generally attending painful operations, often only because they are so, and because they are expensive to the patient ".-Lectures on the Principles of Surgery, page 210. It sometimes occurs (and we lately saw an instance of this kind in the case of one, who once aimed at being the rival of that great man, country
from whose works the above lines are taken) that the surgeon pores for half an hour over the amputated surface, looking in vain for the arteries, and seizing at last, with a rough grasp, nerves, veins, and muscular substance, tying them up together in spite of the cries of the patient; here one may be excused, if he estimate not very highly the operative branch of surgery, which is connected with such sacrifices to the patient, although the fault may lay more with the surgeon than with the art which he pretends to exercise. There is, however, a branch of operative surgery, to which the above reproach cannot be made, that it only destroys. We mean plastic surgery, as applied to a great many malformations and diseases ; a branch of surgery in which alone the operating surgeon becomes a real artist. The formation of a nose, for instance, requires much more attention than is generally believed; almost every case requires a different mode of operation and some variation in the after-treatment; hence the great variety of the modes of operating according to the nature of the deformity. Indeed no small portion of ingenuity, skill, and imagination is required, to select always the best method, as the chief end of the operation is often only the removal of a disfiguration. Though John Hunter had performed, a long time age, some well-known experiments on transplantation in animals ; though Carpue was the first who introduced the Indian rhinoplastic operation into Europe, viz., the formation of the nose from the skin of the forehead, this interesting branch of operative surgery seems not to have found many cultivators in this country, though disfigured faces are, perhaps, as frequent in London as anywhere else.
GRAINS AND SCRUPLES Under this various
appear week by week the unfettered thoughts Each contributor is responsible for the section his name can be seen later in the half-yearly index
heading occupations.
FROM A CIVIL SERVANT IV " Porter ! Put my skis in the carriage with me, will you ? "-" Mine were registered through from Innsbruck, thank goodness." " Quite primitive, my dear. Just snow and Gruas Robert Gotts. Too fit-making. But the instructor ! Taylor-except that he had nicer ears." " What about a drink in the Pullman ? "-" Thanks, but tea for me after that crossing, darling. I’ll come along now ; Elise is lookin’ after our things." *
*
*
From Christmas onwards for the next three months conversations such as these can be heard at Dover Marine Station among the throngs of well-to-do English returning from that best of all holidays, winter sports in the Austrian Tirol. Through a byway of medical practice, the Medical Inspection of Aliens, I was led to discover another not so fortunate crowd of travellers from Austria who come in not for three months of the year only but every day. For the last few years 12,000 or so Austrian girls and women have entered England annually to take employment, the vast majority as domestic servants. The " servant problem " is bad enough as it is-without them it would be desperate. Soon perhaps it will be desperate in Austria ! Now how do these girls come into England and what are their nrst impressions of this country likely to be ?‘? They have been travelling-third class-for a minimum of thirty hours and often for fifty hours with two nights in the train. After a four-hour crossing from Ostend, perhaps cold and rough, they land at Dover carrying all their luggage in a large suit-case or two, they stand in a queue until they are interviewed-after the foreign business and private visitors have been seen-by the immigration officials, who, however sympathetic they may feel, must think first of the others waiting behind and sacrifice the graces to speed. The long wooden shed, draughty or stuffy according to the season, is filled with anxious worried faces trying to understand the questions put to them in a strange language. Sometimes there may be a hitch-some flaw in the papers. " There’re enough tears shed in this room to float a battleship," a sympathetic official told me. Next comes the doctor. They wait in a little room and are brought in one by one by the nurse. The doctor looks them over, feels their pulse and asks them a question or two, and occasionally selects someone for more detailed examination. Shunting trains just outside, the language difficulty, nervousness and fatigue, all contribute to the ordeal. Even when " passed " by the doctor, they cannot escape quickly. For the first time in the lives of many of them they encounter the English door-handle-a knob which must be turned-instead of the latch which is universal in Austria. Then the Customs.... Finally they emerge’on to the station to find that the boat-train has gone and they must wait for a slow " to London. Even if they had any money-most of them have none-the prices in English currency charged at the refreshment room are beyond their means. Tea they do not know and our coffee they would probably not recognise. When they do eventually arrive at Victoria any mistress who has cometo meet them on the boat-train has almost certainly faded away in despair. "
of doctors in for a month ;;
Small wonder that many of them-still with a journey perhaps to Scotland in front of them-are reported to be in a hysterical condition." "
*
*
*
What a difference it would make if a sympathetic German-speaking woman was present to meet the two daily boats on which the great majority arrive, to explain to them what was happening, to help them to catch the train and, if it was lost, to suggest how and where they could spend their time of waiting-perhaps to see them provided with hot drinks or food. The Travellers’ Aid Society have kindly consented to help in providing such a service if sufficient funds are raised by this appeal. I would ask anyone who has ever enjoyed a holiday in Austria, anyone who has
benefited from the services of an Austrian maid, anyone who would like the impressions of England carried away by deserving guests of ours to be pleasant ones, to send a contribution to the Travellers’ Aid Society, 140, Gloucester-place, N.W.I, marked " Foreign Fund." Please.... ever
THE LANCET 100 YEARS AGO December 23rd, 1837, p. 470. From an account of a plastic operation performed at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.
on
the
nose
"
Operations ", said the greatest surgeon which this ever produced, John Hunter, " are a reflection on the healing art; they are a tacit acknowledgement of its insufficiency. It is like an armed savage, who attempts to get that by force which a civilised man would get by stratagem. No surgeon should approach the victim of his operation without a sacred dread and reluctance, and should be superior to that popular éclât generally attending painful operations, often only because they are so, and because they are expensive to the patient ".-Lectures on the Principles of Surgery, page 210. It sometimes occurs (and we lately saw an instance of this kind in the case of one, who once aimed at being the rival of that great man, country
from whose works the above lines are taken) that the surgeon pores for half an hour over the amputated surface, looking in vain for the arteries, and seizing at last, with a rough grasp, nerves, veins, and muscular substance, tying them up together in spite of the cries of the patient; here one may be excused, if he estimate not very highly the operative branch of surgery, which is connected with such sacrifices to the patient, although the fault may lay more with the surgeon than with the art which he pretends to exercise. There is, however, a branch of operative surgery, to which the above reproach cannot be made, that it only destroys. We mean plastic surgery, as applied to a great many malformations and diseases ; a branch of surgery in which alone the operating surgeon becomes a real artist. The formation of a nose, for instance, requires much more attention than is generally believed; almost every case requires a different mode of operation and some variation in the after-treatment; hence the great variety of the modes of operating according to the nature of the deformity. Indeed no small portion of ingenuity, skill, and imagination is required, to select always the best method, as the chief end of the operation is often only the removal of a disfiguration. Though John Hunter had performed, a long time age, some well-known experiments on transplantation in animals ; though Carpue was the first who introduced the Indian rhinoplastic operation into Europe, viz., the formation of the nose from the skin of the forehead, this interesting branch of operative surgery seems not to have found many cultivators in this country, though disfigured faces are, perhaps, as frequent in London as anywhere else.