saunders
n. countablen. a person who works as a doctor's assistant or a medical student who helps in a hospital. This is an old-fashioned word that you mostly see in history books or old stories.
n. a medical student or an assistant to a surgeon or physician. Historically used to describe those performing minor medical tasks; now largely obsolete in modern clinical practice.
The young saunders assisted the doctor during the long surgery.
In the nineteenth-century hospital, a saunders was responsible for preparing bandages and monitoring patients overnight.
The historical novel depicts the life of a weary saunders, highlighting the grueling hours and rudimentary medical knowledge expected of assistants in that era.
Primarily an archaic or historical term; rarely encountered outside of period literature or medical history.