CHARITY NOT SOLICITED.
A sad Omission.
Believing, as I do, that every reader of these pages is personally cognizant of the fact of the true benevolence of our present American physicians, and because of the silence of the few biographers respecting the generosities and benevolent deeds of those “who have gone before,” I have devoted more space to anecdotes of English surgeons and physicians than I otherwise would. I have searched throughout four volumes of biographies of American physicians without being able to find a single anecdote of generosity recorded therein worthy of notice. Also in the “Lives of Surgeons ——” I have to regret this almost unpardonable neglect. I am assured from my personal knowledge of some of these latter that there are a thousand instances, which, in justice to their benevolence, ought to be put upon record, as they are engraven upon the hearts of their suffering fellow-creatures, and not for the aggrandizement of the generous bestower so much as an example for the cynical and the uncharitable world.
A physician has just left my presence who has given away more than he has ever received from his practice. The good physician is always generous. A mean-souled man cannot become a successful practitioner. His success with his patients depends as much, or more, upon the kindly influences that beam from his eye, that flow from his soul, as upon the medicine that he deals out from his “saddle-bags.”
Generosity and kindness are innate to the man. They require little cultivation.
The following amusing anecdote from “Every Saturday,” I have reason to believe, has reference to one of our best physicians, who is also a man of letters, and illustrates my assertion:—