“I was shown into the examining-room. Large table, and a half dozen old gentlemen at it. ‘Big wigs, no doubt,’ I thought, ‘and, sure as my name is Symonds, they’ll pluck me like a pigeon.’
“‘Well, sir, what do you know about the science of medicine?’ asked the stout man in the head seat.
“‘More than he does of the practice, I’ll be bound,’ tittered a little wasp-like dandy—a West End ladies’ doctor.
“I trembled in my shoes.
“‘Well, sir,’ continued the first, ‘what would you do if during an action a man was brought to you with both arms and legs shot off? Now, sir, speak out; don’t keep the board waiting. What would you do?’
“‘By Jove, sir,’ I answered, ‘I would pitch him overboard, and go on to some one else to whom I could be of more service.’
“By thunder! every one present burst out laughing, and they passed me directly—passed me directly.”
Delicate Fees.
There are certain delicate cases, usually terminating in “good news,” in which it has long been an established custom for the physician to receive a double fee. “A father just presented with an heir, or a lucky fellow just made one, is expected to bleed freely for the benefit of the faculty.” Even the Irish, who, in about all other cases, calculate on “cheating the doctor to pay the priest,” will usually lay by a little sum from their penury, or their bank hoardings, as the case may be, “to pay the doctor for the babbie.”
We insert the following poetry (!) for the fun of the thing; nevertheless, it is within the experience of more than one physician, who, after doing his duty, exhibiting his best professional ability, and saving the wife of some miserable, worthless fellow, who never deserved such a godsend for a companion, has cheated the doctor out of his fees from spite, when, if the poor woman had died, he would have liberally paid the physician. Let no man take this to himself.