"Doyle, Arthur Conan - Round The Red Lamp" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

muscular in the palm, tapering in the fingers, "with
an eye at the end of each." I shall not easily
forget how Dr. Patterson and I cut Sir John Sirwell,
the County Member, and were unable to find the stone.
It was a horrible moment. Both our careers were at
stake. And then it was that Dr. Winter, whom we had
asked out of courtesy to be present, introduced into
the wound a finger which seemed to our excited senses
to be about nine inches long, and hooked out the
stone at the end of it. "It's always well to bring
one in your waistcoat-pocket," said he with a
chuckle, "but I suppose you youngsters are above all
that."

We made him president of our branch of the
British Medical Association, but he resigned after
the first meeting. "The young men are too much for
me," he said. "I don't understand what they are
talking about." Yet his patients do very well. He
has the healing touch--that magnetic thing which
defies explanation or analysis, but which is a very
evident fact none the less. His mere presence
leaves the patient with more hopefulness and
vitality. The sight of disease affects him as dust
does a careful housewife. It makes him angry and
impatient. "Tut, tut, this will never do!" he cries,
as he takes over a new case. He would shoo Death out
of the room as though he were an intrusive hen. But
when the intruder refuses to be dislodged, when the
blood moves more slowly and the eyes grow dimmer,
then it is that Dr. Winter is of more avail than all
the drugs in his surgery. Dying folk cling to his
hand as if the presence of his bulk and vigour gives
them more courage to face the change; and that
kindly, windbeaten face has been the last earthly
impression which many a sufferer has carried into the
unknown.

When Dr. Patterson and I--both of us young,
energetic, and up-to-date--settled in the district,
we were most cordially received by the old doctor,
who would have been only too happy to be relieved of
some of his patients. The patients themselves,
however, followed their own inclinations--which is a
reprehensible way that patients have--so that we
remained neglected, with our modern instruments and
our latest alkaloids, while he was serving out senna
and calomel to all the countryside. We both of us
loved the old fellow, but at the same time, in the
privacy of our own intimate conversations, we could