renewed:  Philip prided himself a little on his skill in bandaging, and it amused him to wring a word of approval from a nurse.  On certain afternoons in the week there were operations; and he stood in the well of the theatre, in a white jacket, ready to hand the operating surgeon any instrument he wanted or to sponge the blood away so that he could see what he was about.  When some rare operation was to be performed the theatre would fill up, but generally there were not more than half a dozen students present, and then the proceedings had a cosiness which Philip enjoyed.  At that time the world at large seemed to have a passion for appendicitis, and a good many cases came to the operating theatre for this complaint:  the surgeon for whom Philip dressed was in friendly rivalry with a colleague as to which could remove an appendix in the shortest time and with the smallest incision.

In due course Philip was put on accident duty.  The dressers took this in turn; it lasted three days, during which they lived in hospital and ate their meals in the common-room; they had a room on the ground floor near the casualty ward, with a bed that shut up during the day into a cupboard.  The dresser on duty had to be at hand day and night to see to any casualty that came in.  You were on the move all the time, and not more than an hour or two passed during the night without the clanging of the bell just above your head which made you leap out of bed instinctively.  Saturday night was of course the busiest time and the closing of the public-houses the busiest hour.  Men would be brought in by the police dead drunk and it would be necessary to administer a stomach-pump; women, rather the worse for liquor themselves, would come in with a wound on the head or a bleeding nose which their husbands had given them:  some would vow to have the law on him, and others, ashamed, would declare that it had been an accident.  What the dresser could manage himself he did, but if there was anything important he sent for the house-surgeon:  he did this with care, since the house-surgeon was not vastly pleased to be dragged down five flights of stairs for nothing.  The cases ranged from a cut finger to a cut throat.  Boys came in with hands mangled by some machine, men were brought who had been knocked down by a cab, and children who had broken a limb while playing:  now and then attempted suicides were carried in by the police:  Philip saw a ghastly, wild-eyed man with a great gash from ear to ear, and he was in the ward for weeks afterwards in charge of a constable, silent, angry because he was alive, and sullen; he made no secret of the fact that he would try again to kill himself as soon as he was released.  The wards were crowded, and the house-surgeon was faced with a dilemma when patients were brought in by the police:  if they were sent on to the station and died there disagreeable things were said in the papers; and it was very difficult sometimes to tell if a man was dying or drunk.