Merely the Patient by Henry Howard Harper

My first experience in having the wound dressed was one of the high-lights of the whole occasion -- one that requires no straining of the memory to recall. It was indeed a masterpiece of brutality that well deserves to be recorded in medical history; and I remember it as the outstanding instance where my rights and feelings as a patient were asserted with loud spontaneity, in language more forceful than polite.

"I have a happy surprise for you," the nurse greeted me that morning, with a roguish twinkle in her eye; and presently one of the house doctors came in, followed by a nurse pushing a "tea-cart" loaded with bandages, bottles and a wicked looking assortment of probing instruments. He set immediately to work removing my swathings, and when he got down to the criscross network of adhesive tape he carefully peeled up one of the corners, then without the slightest warning he suddenly _ripped the whole thing off_, carrying with it, as I supposed, all the skin, with the kidney and half of my insides adhering to it.