Medical Poems | Page 2

you're heard below.
Whatever changes there may greet
your eyes,
Let not your looks proclaim the least surprise;
It's not
your business by your face to show
All that your patient does not
want to know;
Nay, use your optics with considerate care,
And
don't abuse your privilege to stare.
But if your eyes may probe him
overmuch,
Beware still further how you rudely touch;
Don't clutch
his carpus in your icy fist,
But warm your fingers ere you take the
wrist.
If the poor victim needs must be percussed,
Don't make an
anvil of his aching bust;
(Doctors exist within a hundred miles
Who
thump a thorax as they'd hammer piles;)
If you must listen to his
doubtful chest,
Catch the essentials, and ignore the rest.
Spare him;
the sufferer wants of you and art
A track to steer by, not a finished
chart.
So of your questions: don't in mercy try
To pump your
patient absolutely dry;
He's not a mollusk squirming in a dish,

You're not Agassiz; and he's not a fish.
And last, not least, in each perplexing case,
Learn the sweet magic of
a cheerful face;
Not always smiling, but at least serene,
When grief
and anguish cloud the anxious scene.
Each look, each movement,
every word and tone,
Should tell your patient you are all his own;

Not the mere artist, purchased to attend,
But the warm, ready,
self-forgetting friend,
Whose genial visit in itself combines

The
best of cordials, tonics, anodynes.
Such is the visit that from day to day
Sheds o'er my chamber its
benignant ray.
I give his health, who never cared to claim
Her
babbling homage from the tongue of Fame;
Unmoved by praise, he

stands by all confest,
The truest, noblest, wisest, kindest, best.
1849.
THE TWO ARMIES
As Life's unending column pours,
Two marshalled hosts are seen,--

Two armies on the trampled shores
That Death flows black between.
One marches to the drum-beat's roll,
The wide-mouthed clarion's bray,

And bears upon a crimson scroll,
"Our glory is to slay."
One moves in silence by the stream,
With sad, yet watchful eyes,

Calm as the patient planet's gleam
That walks the clouded skies.
Along its front no sabres shine,
No blood-red pennons wave;
Its
banner bears the single line,
"Our duty is to save."
For those no death-bed's lingering shade;
At Honor's trumpet-call,

With knitted brow and lifted blade
In Glory's arms they fall.
For these no clashing falchions bright,
No stirring battle-cry;
The
bloodless stabber calls by night,--
Each answers, "Here am I!"
For those the sculptor's laurelled bust,
The builder's marble piles,

The anthems pealing o'er their dust
Through long cathedral aisles.
For these the blossom-sprinkled turf
That floods the lonely graves

When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf
In flowery-foaming waves.
Two paths lead upward from below,
And angels wait above,
Who
count each burning life-drop's flow,
Each falling tear of Love.
Though from the Hero's bleeding breast
Her pulses Freedom drew,

Though the white lilies in her crest
Sprang from that scarlet dew,--

While Valor's haughty champions wait
Till all their scars are shown,

Love walks unchallenged through the gate,
To sit beside the
Throne
THE STETHOSCOPE SONG
A PROFESSIONAL BALLAD
THERE was a young man in Boston town,
He bought him a
stethoscope nice and new,
All mounted and finished and polished
down,
With an ivory cap and a stopper too.
It happened a spider within did crawl,
And spun him a web of ample
size,
Wherein there chanced one day to fall
A couple of very
imprudent flies.
The first was a bottle-fly, big and blue,
The second was smaller, and
thin and long;
So there was a concert between the two,
Like an
octave flute and a tavern gong.
Now being from Paris but recently,
This fine young man would show
his skill;
And so they gave him, his hand to try,
A hospital patient
extremely ill.
Some said that his liver was short of bile,
And some that his heart
was over size,
While some kept arguing, all the while,
He was
crammed with tubercles up to his eyes.
This fine young man then up stepped he,
And all the doctors made a
pause;
Said he, The man must die, you see,
By the fifty-seventh of
Louis's laws.
But since the case is a desperate one,
To explore his chest it may be
well;
For if he should die and it were not done,
You know the
autopsy would not tell.

Then out his stethoscope he took,
And on it placed his curious ear;

Mon Dieu! said he, with a knowing look,
Why, here is a sound that 's
mighty queer
The bourdonnement is very clear,--
Amphoric buzzing, as I'm alive

Five doctors took their turn to hear;
Amphoric buzzing, said all the
five.
There's empyema beyond a doubt;
We'll plunge a trocar in his side.

The diagnosis was made out,--
They tapped the patient; so he died.
Now such as hate new-fashioned toys
Began to look extremely glum;

They said that rattles were made for boys,
And vowed that his
buzzing was all a hum.
There was an old lady had long been sick,
And what was the matter
none did know
Her pulse was slow, though her tongue was quick;

To her this knowing youth must go.
So there the nice old lady sat,
With phials and boxes all in a row;

She asked the young doctor what he