Philip had seen him once in a bar near Piccadilly
Circus in a tight-waisted coat and a brown hat with a broad, flat brim. A
third, with a gift for singing and mimicry, who had achieved success at
the smoking concerts of the Medical School by his imitation of notorious
comedians, had abandoned the hospital for the chorus of a musical comedy.
Still another, and he interested Philip because his uncouth manner and
interjectional speech did not suggest that he was capable of any deep
emotion, had felt himself stifle among the houses of London. He grew
haggard in shut-in spaces, and the soul he knew not he possessed struggled
like a sparrow held in the hand, with little frightened gasps and a quick
palpitation of the heart: he yearned for the broad skies and the open,
desolate places among which his childhood had been spent; and he walked
off one day, without a word to anybody, between one lecture and another;
and the next thing his friends heard was that he had thrown up medicine
and was working on a farm.
Philip attended now lectures on medicine and on surgery. On certain
mornings in the week he practised bandaging on out-patients glad to earn
a little money, and he was taught auscultation and how to use the
stethoscope. He learned dispensing. He was taking the examination in
Materia Medica in July, and it amused him to play with various drugs,
concocting mixtures, rolling pills, and making ointments.
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