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- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.278Z
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- 12516
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- often noticed in hospital attendants. Seldom or never did you see him
on deck, and when he _did_ emerge into the light of the sun, it was
with an abashed look, and an uneasy, winking eye. The sun was not made
for _him_. His nervous organization was confounded by the sight of the
robust old sea-dogs on the forecastle and the general tumult of the
spar-deck, and he mostly buried himself below in an atmosphere which
long habit had made congenial.
This young man never indulged in frivolous conversation; he only talked
of the surgeon’s prescriptions; his every word was a bolus. He never
was known to smile; nor did he even look sober in the ordinary way; but
his countenance ever wore an aspect of cadaverous resignation to his
fate. Strange! that so many of those who would fain minister to our own
health should look so much like invalids themselves.
Connected with the sick-bay, over which the surgeon’s steward
presided—but removed from it in place, being next door to the
counting-room of the purser’s steward—was a regular apothecary’s shop,
of which he kept the key. It was fitted up precisely like an
apothecary’s on shore, displaying tiers of shelves on all four sides
filled with green bottles and gallipots; beneath were multitudinous
drawers bearing incomprehensible gilded inscriptions in abbreviated
Latin.
He generally opened his shop for an hour or two every morning and
evening. There was a Venetian blind in the upper part of the door,
which he threw up when inside so as to admit a little air. And there
you would see him, with a green shade over his eyes, seated on a stool,
and pounding his pestle in a great iron mortar that looked like a
howitzer, mixing some jallapy compound. A smoky lamp shed a flickering,
yellow-fever tinge upon his pallid face and the closely-packed
regiments of gallipots.
Several times when I felt in need of a little medicine, but was not ill
enough to report myself to the surgeon at his levees, I would call of a
morning upon his steward at the Sign of the Mortar, and beg him to give
me what I wanted; when, without speaking a word, this cadaverous young
man would mix me my potion in a tin cup, and hand it out through the
little opening in his door, like the boxed-up treasurer giving you your
change at the ticket-office of a theatre.
But there was a little shelf against the wall of the door, and upon
this I would set the tin cup for a while, and survey it; for I never
was a Julius Caesar at taking medicine; and to take it in this way,
without a single attempt at disguising it; with no counteracting little
morsel to hurry down after it; in short to go to the very apothecary’s
in person, and there, at the counter, swallow down your dose, as if it
were a nice mint-julep taken at the bar of a hotel—_this_ was a bitter
bolus indeed. But, then, this pallid young apothecary charged nothing
for it, and _that_ was no small satisfaction; for is it not remarkable,
to say the least, that a shore apothecary should actually charge you
money—round dollars and cents—for giving you a horrible nausea?
My tin cup would wait a long time on that little shelf; yet “Pills,” as
the sailors called him, never heeded my lingering, but in sober, silent
sadness continued pounding his mortar or folding up his powders; until
at last some other customer would appear, and then in a sudden frenzy
of resolution, I would gulp down my sherry-cobbler, and carry its
unspeakable flavour with me far up into the frigate’s main-top. I do
not know whether it was the wide roll of the ship, as felt in that
giddy perch, that occasioned it, but I always got sea-sick after taking
medicine and going aloft with it. Seldom or never did it do me any
lasting good.
Now the Surgeon’s steward was only a subordinate of Surgeon Cuticle
himself, who lived in the ward-room among the Lieutenants,
Sailing-master, Chaplain, and Purser.
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