MY FRONT STREET PATIENT.
“There, take the money,” said the woman (boarding mistress). “Dr. B. would come ferninst the railroad over for half of it, he would,” she added.
“Woman,” said I, “when next any of your kind want a doctor, do you go ferninst the railroad for Dr. B.” (I knew she lied), “and get him for a dollar. As for me, I never, for love or money, will come to your call again.”
I never heard of money enough to induce me to visit Front or Charles Street after that night, and I have seen some anxious faces looking about for a doctor, in case of emergency, in that locality.
“Saving at the Spigot, and wasting at the Bung.”
Again, there is a class in every city who, to avoid a physician’s fee, go to an apothecary, briefly and imperfectly state their case, perhaps to a green clerk, or a proprietor who is as ignorant of the pathology of the disease as the miserable applicant; and who ever knew of a druggist too ignorant to prescribe for a case over the counter? The result is often the administration of harsh remedies, which aggravate the present, or produce some other disease worse than the original, and in the end the patient is obliged to seek the advice of a physician.
Now the patient is ashamed to tell the whole truth, the doctor has yet to learn what drugs are rankling in the system, and the disease is often protracted thereby ten times as long as it need have been, had the man at the outset sought the advice of a respectable physician. This is an every-day occurrence. I knew a young man who recently went into consumption from having a comparatively simple case prolonged by this apotheco-medical interference.
Shopping Patients.
“A queer kind of patients!” you exclaim.
Yes, very queer. One class of them go round from office to office, to “just inquire about a friend” (themselves), “if they could be cured,” how long it would require, and, ten to one, even ask what medicines “you would give for such a case.”