Surgeons at Play.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7737, 13 February 1905, Page 2

Surgeons at Play.

lhc house surgeons of Paris, who ead a life of very hard work during InZ, . ycar » ot '*" ,vit « the hospital, break out once a twelvemonth towards Christmas. The ,"«> Uallj- Telegraph) was worthy of the most gruesome invei* tions of medical humour. The possibilities of the jirimiy ffroU) i Uo have been greatly increased bv sc-i----entihc discoveries, and bucteriologv with its micrococci, has added new terrors to medical jokes. Onlv the initiated were supposed to be present. ' The ball always begins with a march-past of the cars, devised and built up by the surgeons of hospitals ut much expense of labour und weird ingenuity. The hospital of the 29th Bastion opened the show with a " Septic and anti-septic procession " representing the worthy M. Piot, the prophet of re-population, submerged by pnetimococoi, streptococci and other cocci, each more terrifying than us fellows, and all, of course, magnified a few- million times. Andral Hospital found humour in curdled milk l'cgarded as a specific for eternal j-outh, Professor Metchnikoff being depicted as ladling ,'t out to a clamouring multitude of •• vjeux marchetirs " got ~p like Major Pendennis. Laribosiere had a gallery of all the best-known surgeons (if lans.'each bearing emblems which vividly symbolised each one's speciality in operations, and which must be left to the imagination. The Hotel Dieu had erected a car in praise of Bacchus and Silenus, but displayed the modern scientific spirit by glorifying water as 'well, allegorically Cochin Hospital panegyrised salt—Attic salt, common salt grains o salt the Sel Gaulois, and so on. Ihe Enfants Mnlades murs-halled a procession of night-ninrjsl. ami indescribable monsters. Ueaulon produced " The Sclerotic March," in" which figureil the baby's bottle, drink, tobacco. Cupid, iodine, and serums the allusiveness of the whole being obvious. The house surgeons of Necker were awarded first prize. Thcv had hit upon nn excruciating pun in the name of their car, which was called the "entente cardiaque." The scenes represented formed an agonising mwlh-y. There was an nlamning picture of a Lord Mayor's banquet and its consequences. Hard by Petronius Arbiter was opening Ids' vein gracefully on a bed of roses. Further on, nn allegorised pleasure was suddenly transformed into denth. Bishops and cardinals in the midst pf celebrating a "purple mass" of n very unorthodox liind suddenlv broke out into the Latin pravers for the dead. What the .entente cardiot|ue meant nobody could discover unless it represented: every scone most likely to inflict heart ditlensd by shock", but, liejng fhu most ghnstll.v. the car was unnnmnously voted ; the •best. Until eight in the mornanutonnsed subjects, and there wcro s-ermns, surgical instruments with ing nucrolx-s danced furiously with quadrilles of all the horrors at once