Coming from one in my condition, this was rather straight talk.  The doctor was visibly disconcerted.  Had he not feared to lose caste with the attendants who stood by, I think he would have given me another chance.  But he had too much pride and too little manhood to recede from a false position already taken.  I no longer resisted, even verbally, for I no longer wanted the doctor to desist.  Though I did not anticipate the operation with pleasure, I was eager to take the man’s measure.  He and the attendants knew that I usually kept a trick or two even up the sleeve of a strait-jacket, so they took added precautions.  I was flat on my back, with simply a mattress between me and the floor.  One attendant held me.  Another stood by with the medicine and with a funnel through which, as soon as Mr. Hyde should insert the tube in one of my nostrils, the dose was to be poured.  The third attendant stood near as a reserve force.  Though the insertion of the tube, when skilfully done, need not cause suffering, the operation as conducted by Mr. Hyde was painful.  Try as he would, he was unable to insert the tube properly, though in no way did I attempt to balk him.  His embarrassment seemed to rob his hand of whatever cunning it may have possessed.  After what seemed ten minutes of bungling, though it was probably not half that, he gave up the attempt, but not until my nose had begun to bleed.  He was plainly chagrined when he and his bravos retired.  Intuitively I felt that they would soon return.  That they did, armed with a new implement of war.  This time the doctor inserted between my teeth a large wooden peg—­to keep open a mouth which he usually wanted shut.  He then forced down my throat a rubber tube, the attendant adjusted the funnel, and the medicine, or rather liquid—­for its medicinal properties were without effect upon me—­was poured in.

As the scant reports sent to my conservator during these three weeks indicated that I was not improving as he had hoped, he made a special trip to the institution, to investigate in person.  On his arrival he was met by none other than Doctor Jekyll, who told him that I was in a highly excited condition, which, he intimated, would be aggravated by a personal interview.  Now for a man to see his brother in such a plight as mine would be a distressing ordeal, and, though my conservator came within a few hundred feet of my prison cell, it naturally took but a suggestion to dissuade him from coming nearer.  Doctor Jekyll did tell him that it had been found necessary to place me in “restraint” and “seclusion” (the professional euphemisms for “strait-jacket,” “padded cell,” etc.), but no hint was given that I had been roughly handled.  Doctor Jekyll’s politic dissuasion was no doubt inspired by the knowledge that if ever I got within speaking distance of my conservator, nothing could prevent my giving him a circumstantial account of my sufferings—­which account would have been corroborated by the blackened eye I happened to have at the time.  Indeed, in dealing with my conservator the assistant physician showed a degree of tact which, had it been directed toward myself, would have sufficed to keep me tolerably comfortable.