The Surgeon's Daughter

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: upon Mm a dimness of sight, a rushing sound in his cure, and the powers of life were for a time suspended. CHAPTER VII. A wise physician, skill'd our wounds to hc.il, Is more than armies to the common weal. Pope's Homer, As Middlemas returned to his senses, he was sensible that hit blood felt more cool; that the feverish throb of his pulsation was diminished; that the ligatures on his person were removed, and 1m hmfs performed their functions more freely. One assistant was binding up a vein, from which a considerable quantity of blood had been taken; another, who had just washed the face of the patient, was holding aromatic vinegar to his nostrils. As he began to open his eyes, the person who had just completed the bandage, said in Latin, but in a very low tone, and without raising his head, Annon sis Ricardus ille Middlemas, ex civitate Middlemassiense ? Respondc in lingua Latina. Sum ille miserrimus, replied Richard, again shutting his eyes; for, strange as it may seem, the voice of his comrade Adam Hartley, though his presence might be of so much consequence in this emergency, conveyed a pang to his wounded pride. He was conscious of unkindly, if not hostile, feelings towards his old companion; he remembered the tone of superiority which he used to assume over him, and thus to lie stretched at his feet, and in a manner at his mercy, aggravated his distress, by the feelings of the dying chieftain, Earl Percy sees my fall. This was, however, too unreasonable an emotion to subsist above a minute. In the next, he availed himself of the Latin language, with which both were familiar (for in that time the medical studies at the celebrated University of Edinburgh were, in a great measure, conducted in Latin), to tell in a few words his own folly, and the villany...