The elephant man and other reminiscences / by Sir Frederick Treves, bart.

  • Treves, Frederick, 1853-1923.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The elephant man and other reminiscences / by Sir Frederick Treves, bart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cases came into his surgeon’s .wards. He was said to be 4h taking in.” On this particular Christmas week I was 44 taking in.” Two of my brother house-surgeons had obtained short leave for Christmas and I had undertaken their duties. It was a busy time; so busy indeed that I had not been to bed for two nights. On the eve of the third night I was waiting for my dressers in the main corridor at the foot of the stair. I was leaning against the wall and, for the first and the last time in my life, I fell asleep standing up. The nap was short, for I was soon awakened, 44 rudely awakened ” as novelists would put it. I found myself clutched by a heated and pant¬ ing woman who, as she clung to me, said in a hollow voice, 44 Where have they took him? ” The question needed some amplification. I in¬ quired who 44 he” was. She replied, 44 The bad accident case just took in.” Now; the term 44 accident” implies, in hospital language, a man ridden over in the street, or fallen from a scaffold, or broken up by a railway collision. I told her I had admitted no such case of accident. In fact the docks and the great works were closed, and men and women were celebrating the birth of Christ by eating too much, by getting drunk and by street rioting, which acts involved only minor