hydrostatic press, by which a weight of one
hundred tons can be brought down upon any drugs
to squeeze out the last drops of their useful
juices, for economy goes hand in hand with
abundance in this part of the establishment,
as the well and elaborately kept books show.
Next the laboratory is a kind of store-room,
full enough of physic to frighten a dyspeptic
man into health—and that's saying a great
deal. The drugs come here in their raw state,
and are made up in the laboratory, on one
side, to be dispensed in the apothecary's
shop on the other. In this place, in a year
they use enormous quantities of drugs, and
some of the single bottles and drawers, hold
an amount of value, surprising to recount.
One bottle holds, in solution, as much iodide
of potass—a thing largely used—as cost at
wholesale price, fifteen pounds. In the drawers
you may see sixty or seventy pounds worth
of bark—about a year's consumption, besides
which, above one hundred and lifty pounds a
year is spent upon quinine! As all this is
got from the smaller branches of a particular
kind of South American oak, what forests
must be needed to keep up the supply for
this one hospital alone!

Between two and three hundred pounds
are spent, every year, for strong sound port
wine, for the sick poor. It is bought in pipes
and drawn off as needed. Nearly two thou-
sand pounds weight of castor oil; two
hundred gallons of spirits of wine, at seventeen
shillings a gallon; twelve tons of linseed
meal; a thousand pounds weight of senna;
twenty-seven hundred-weight of salts; are
items in the annual account for drugs. The
grand total spent upon physic, in a twelve
month, being two thousand six hundred
pounds. Five thousand yards of calico are
wanted for rollers, for bandaging; to say
nothing of the stouter and stiffer fabric used
for plaisters. More than half a hundred-
weight of sarsaparilla is used every week, a
sign how much the constitution of the patients
requires improvement. In a year twenty-nine
thousand seven hundred leeches were bought
for the use of the establishment—an invasion
of foreigners without parallel, until we have
the influx of the Great Exhibition—for the
leeches brought to bite and die in this London
Hospital are gathered in France and Poland,
in Africa and Spain. A ton and a half of
treacle is annually used to make some kinds
of syrup; the five casks of hips, which, mixed
with a cask of sugar, makes linctus for coughs,
has been already mentioned, but one little
fact, in addition, respecting it should not
pass unnoticed. This preparation for coughs
is red in colour, and looks fruity, and tastes
somewhat sweet, having still, however, an
acid dash. As winter comes the coughs
increase, and the demand upon the stock of
linctus becomes heavier and heavier. This is
expected and provided for; but one season it
had been larger even than usual. The same
children and the same women came again
and again, most perseveringly; when, in con-
sequence of some inquiries, it was found that
one of the most urgent claimants for the
favourite physic lived by selling little sweets
and pies to children, in a back street, near
Smithfield, and that she used the favourite
linctus to make fruit tarts of!

But we have been a long time with Mr
Wood, the apothecary, and must return to
the wards. By half-past one the ward dinners
are all over, and all the inmates are expecting
the visit of the chief surgeons and physicians
of the day. The approach of these is known
by the tramp of many feet up the stairs for
the medical officer is medical teacher also,
and comes surrounded by the bevy of students
who are " walking the hospitals." Tall and
short, fat and lean, young and middle-aged,
in black, green, brown, and gray, but all
displaying a certain grave, inquiring serious-
ness, on comes the crowd.

You may always know the medical repute
of a man by the number of his pupils; and
somehow, the surgeons always have most.
There is something certain and exact; something
free from doubt and humbug about
anatomy and surgery, which commends itself
to young and ingenuous inquirers; and hence,
partly, perhaps, the greater throng round the
chief surgeon, as he makes his way through
the wards of a hospital, than round any of his
merely medical brethren.

Whilst this company of surgeons that are
and surgeons that hope to be, are going from
bed to bed, examining and questioning and
prescribing for patient in surgical ward after
surgical ward, the physicians are performing
a similar duty in the medical wards; for the
uninitiated should know that a great merit
of a large hospital, lies in the opportunities it
has for classifying the sick. The timid patient
with disease of the heart, or the delicate
woman suffering with still more critical maladies,
in a good-sized establishment can be
separated from the contact, and be away from
the groans of any sufferer by accident or from
operations.

The rapidity with which the old medical
practitioners detect the peculiarities of a case,
is marvellous. The size, strength, complexion,
general aspect, tone of voice, brightness or
dullness of eye displayed by the sick, tell
as much, or more, than any verbal story of
aches and pains. The glance, a few questions,
a pen and ink scratch of some half-dozen
pharmaceutical hieroglyphics upon a card
handed from the bed-head by the attendant
nurse, and on go the crowd to the next bed,
and the next, until all have been seen. The
last stairs are descended; and as the surgeons
and physicians get into certain yellow chariots,
and bright blue broughams, which have been
waiting all the while in the hospital square,
the students trudge off round the angle of the
building to the half-past two anatomical
lecture.

Again, there is a gathering up of physic