“May not a man be both?” suggested Canning, in the presence of a circle of friends, before whom Sir Henry Halford happened to quote the old saying.
“There is generally a fool in every family, whom the parents select at once for a priest or a physician,” said Peter Pindar. He was good authority.
I am of the opinion that there are many whose mental capacity has been overrated, who have made doctors of themselves; but we are not to treat of fools in this chapter, but of men whom circumstances have created physicians, and of men who, in spite of circumstances of birth or education, have made themselves doctors.
In the choice of a trade or profession, every young man should weigh carefully his natural capacity to the pursuit selected. His parents or guardians should consult the youth’s adaptability rather than their own convenience. How many have dragged out a miserable existence by ill choice of a calling! Men who were destined by nature to be wood-sawyers and diggers of trenches, are found daily taking upon themselves the immense responsibility of teaching those whose mental calibre is far above their own, or assuming the greater responsibility of administering to the afflicted.
If a man finds himself adapted to a higher calling than that originally selected for him by his friends, by all means let him “come up higher;” but too many by far have changed from a trade to a profession to which they had no adaptability.
So we find men in the medical profession who were better as they were,—bakers, barbers, butchers, tailors, tinkers, pedagogues, cobblers, horse doctors, etc., etc.
There used to be a fish-peddler going about Boston, blowing a fish-horn, and crying his “fresh cod an’ haddock,” who, getting tired of that loud crying and loud smelling occupation, took to blowing his horn for his “wonderful discovery” of a “pasture weed,” which cured every humor but a thundering humor (one can see the humor of the joke), and every eruption since the eruption of Hecla in 1783,—which is a pity that he had not made his discovery in time to have tried it on old Hecla’s back when it was up.
Barbers as Doctors.
A barber of Boston, accidentally overhearing a gentleman mention a certain remedy for the “barber’s itch,” seized upon the idea of speculating upon it, and at once sold out his shop, made up the ointment, clapped M. D. to his name, put out his circulars, and is now seeking whom he may devour, as a physician.
With the looseness of morals and the laxity of our laws, one of these fellows “can make a doctor as quick as a tinker can make a tin kettle.”