Q.

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PUNCH’S PENCILLINGS.—­No.  XVIII.

[Illustrations:  POLITICAL THEATRICALS EXTRAORDINARY.

    NORMA.

NORMA  (the Deserted)       LORD MELBOURNE. 
ADALGISA (the Seductive)    SIR R. PEEL. 
POLLIO (the Faithless)      MR. WAKLEY. 
CHILDREN                    MASTERS RUSSELL & MORPETH.]

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THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT.

7.—­OF VARIOUS OTHER DIVERTING MATTERS CONNECTED WITH GRINDING.

[Illustration:  F]From experience we are aware that the invention of the useful species of phrenotypics, alluded to in our last chapter, does not rest with the grinder alone.  We once knew a medical student (and many even now at the London hospitals will recollect his name without mentioning it), who, when he was grinding for the Hall, being naturally of a melodious and harmonic disposition, conceived the idea of learning the whole of his practice of physic by setting a description of the diseases to music.  He had a song of some hundred and twenty verses, which he called “The Poetry of Steggall’s Manual;” and this he put to the tune of the “Good Old Days of Adam and Eve.”  We deeply lament that we cannot produce the whole of this lyrical pathological curiosity.  Two verses, however, linger on our memory, and these we have written down, requesting that they may be said or sung to the air above-mentioned, and dedicating them to the gentlemen who are going up next Thursday evening.  They relate to the symptoms, treatment, and causes of Haemoptysis and Haematemesis; which terms respectively imply, for the benefit of the million unprofessional readers who weekly gasp for our fresh number, a spitting of blood from the lungs and a vomiting of ditto from the stomach.  The song was composed of stanzas similar to those which follow, except the portion relating to Diseases of the Brain, which was more appropriately separated into the old English division of Fyttes.

HAEMOPTYSIS.

  A sensation of weight and oppression at the chest, sirs;
  With tickling at the larynx, which scarcely gives you rest, sirs;
  Full hard pulse, salt taste, and tongue very white, sirs;
  And blood brought up in coughing, of colour very bright, sirs. 
  It depends on causes three—­the first’s exhalation;
  The next a ruptured artery—­the third, ulceration. 
  In treatment we may bleed, keep the patient cool and quiet,
  Acid drinks, digitalis, and attend to a mild diet. 
        Sing hey, sing ho, we do not grieve
        When this formidable illness takes its leave.

HAEMATEMESIS.