A GOOD LIVER.
“Ah, doctor,” said a poor, emaciated invalid to me during my first year’s practice at ——, “you do me good like a medicine by your presence. Why, the blue devils leave the house the moment you enter. I don’t believe you was ever blue.”
“Hereafter my patients shall never know that I am.”
Nor is it necessary to gulp down ardent spirits to keep the spirits up. Stimulants produce an unnatural buoyancy of spirits, and the unnatural destroys the natural habit of the system. A good and natural habit does not grow upon a person to his injury; an unnatural one always does, ending in his destruction. A good living gives good spirits; cæteris paribus, a poor living low spirits.
A modern Silenus.
Silenus, of the mythologists, was a demigod, who became the nurse, the preceptor, and finally the attendant, of Bacchus. He was represented as a fat, bloated old fellow, riding on an ass, and drunk every day in the year.
I knew a “bright and shining light” in the medical profession who turned out a modern Silenus. This was Dr. G., of Plymouth, Conn. His father had given him the best medical education which this country afforded. He was a gentleman of superior address, as well as talent, tall, straight, and handsome as an Apollo, with a dark, flashing eye, a massive brow, shaded by a profusion of jet-black locks. How long he had practised medicine I do not know. Throughout the county he had an excellent professional reputation, particularly as a surgeon. His instruments were numerous, and of the best and latest improvements. Alas that such a man should be lost to the community, and to humanity! But his appetite for intoxicating drink knew no bounds. His thirst was as insatiable as Tantalus’.
When I first knew him, he still was in practice, but the better portion of the community had ceased to trust him. He never was sober for a day. He occupied then a little office in the square, containing a front and a back room. In the latter were his few medicines,—there was no apothecary in town,—and a number of large glass jars, containing excellent anatomical and fœtal specimens. This room was not finished inside, and the walls were full of nails, projecting through from the clapboards outside.
One day a Mr. Hotchkiss went after him, hoping to find the doctor sufficiently sober to prescribe for a patient, in a case of emergency.