Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/443

Rh make an exhibition of tongue and pulse. What made matters so aggravating was, that she was as strong as a horse, while the doctor was a delicate man. She was so selfish and perverse, that he was obliged to tell her that he would have nothing to do with her case. Similarly, I have known the son of a rich man who proposed to pay a clergyman several hundred pounds a year for leave to spend his evenings with him. The parson, however, was obliged to tell his rich friend that he talked such intolerable twaddle, that he could not accept his company on any terms that could be named! But the oddest of these arrangements is the following: A medical man has been attending a patient several years, and yet he has never seen his patient. The gentleman firmly believes that he has an œsophagus of peculiar construction, and that he is accordingly liable at any moment to be choked. That help may be at hand whenever any sudden emergency may occur, he has a physician in the house night and day. The physician, being human, must needs take his walks abroad, and it becomes necessary to provide a substitute for him two hours a day. Accordingly a doctor attends daily from twelve to two, fills up his time by disposing of an admirable lunch, and finds the gold and silver coin, in their usual happy combination, neatly put by the side of his plate, in tissue-paper. Up to the present date he has never had the pleasure of exchanging words with his interesting patient.

It is in medical biography, or, rather, medical autobiography, that we must look for our most valuable and authentic instances. Medical literature is not rich in this way; some half-dozen volumes would nearly include the whole. It is to be regretted, indeed, that the best medical men write the least; those who have obtained the highest rank in their profession, and who would have most of science, most of incident to impart. There is all the difference in the world between books that are written to obtain practice, and books that are written out of the fulness of practice. ... In medical autobiography we have such charming narratives as those written by Sir Benjamin Brodie and Sir Henry Holland. There is no doubt that even fictitious narratives, such as "Early Struggles," in the "Diary of a Late Physician," really give us facts substantially as true as any which we find in regular memoirs. I myself know physicians of singular learning and ability, who for half a dozen years have not taken half a dozen guineas a year. Other men, by the happy use of dress and address, though inferior, leave them far behind. One instance is on record which might well be worked up into some narrative like Mr. Warren's. An able man waited and waited hopelessly till ruin stared him in the face. One night, when brooding on his miseries, he heard a bell ringing violently at his surgery door. Opening it, he found that a man had been thrown out of his cab and nearly killed, and they wanted to bring him into the surgery. The medical man found that there were concussion of the brain and dislocation of the shoulder-joint. His card-case showed that