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THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT.

5.--OF HIS MATURITY, AND LATIN EXAMINATION.

The second season arrives, and our pupil becomes "a medical student" in
the fullest sense of the word. He has an indistinct recollection that
there are such things as wards in the hospital as well as in a key or the
city, and a vague wandering, like the morning's impression of the dreams
of the preceding night, that in the remote dark ages of his career he took
some notes upon the various lectures, the which have long since been
converted into pipe-lights or small darts, which, twisted up and propelled
from between the forefingers of each hand, fly with unerring aim across
the theatre at the lecturer's head, the slumbering student, or any other
object worth aiming at--an amusing way of beguiling the hour's lecture,
and only excelled by the sport produced, if he has the good luck to sit in
a sunbeam, from making a tournament of "Jack-o'-lanthorns" on the ceiling.
His locker in the lobby of the dissecting-room has long since been devoid
of apron, sleeves, scalpels, or forceps; but still it is not empty. Its
contents are composed of three bellpull-handles, a valuable series of
shutter-fastenings, two or three broken pipes, a pewter "go" (which, if
everybody had their own, would in all probability belong to Mr. Evans, of
Covent Garden Piazza), some scraps of biscuit, and a round knocker, which
forcibly recalls a pleasant evening he once spent, with the accompanying
anecdotes of how he "bilked the pike" at Waterloo Bridge, and poor Jones
got "jug'd" by mistake.

It must not, however, be supposed that the student now neglects visiting