I prescribed rhus toxicodendron. That very afternoon the lecturer had discussed the remedy. My case seemed made to order for it. Though prescribing without a moment’s hesitation, still I rushed home and looked up my notes, and studied the subject in the books, finding to my satisfaction that the remedy was well prescribed. In those days one had abundant faith that the remedies, if correctly applied, that is, if the true similimum be found, would do all they promised. My class-mates laughed at my rebuff, but congratulated me on effecting an entrance, and on the selection of the remedy.
Early in the morning I hastened to my patient. At the door the big woman met me with the warmth and cordiality that only an Irish woman can Show when so disposed:
“Come in, Doctor, come right in; my son do be feelin’ better, God bless you!”
Of course he was better; had I not given him rhus tox when all his symptoms called for it? I have since wondered what I should have thought, or done, had my patient failed to respond to the remedy; but there he was, surprisingly better, it was plain to see.
It was my time for revenge: Treating the woman’s warmth with the same apparent indifference that I had her insolence, I allowed myself an outlet for my satisfaction in cordiality to my patient. Going carefully over his symptoms I found him indeed better, though still far from well, and this I told him. Mixing fresh medicine, and giving fresh directions as to his care, I told him he ought to get on nicely now; and then, turning to the woman, said, “To-morrow I will have one of the male physicians make the visit.”
The patient began to protest, and the woman herself to show disappointment:
“Oh, no, Doctor, I guess you’ll do as well as anybody.” But I wickedly replied that I thought she would be better pleased to have another doctor, and I could easily arrange it. Then she pleaded with me not to throw up the case—no one could do so well—her son would get worse if he had a change of doctors, and so on. So, not wishing to excite my patient, and thinking I had punished her enough, I condescended to keep the case. He made a good recovery, and Mrs. Lynch was one of my staunchest advocates after that, recommending me to her neighbours in glowing praise. She also recommended her son to me: “Mike do be thinkin’ a lot of you, Doctor, for savin’ his life. He’s a good boy, is Mike, and will make someone a good man; he gets twinty dollars a month, and has no bad habits, Doctor. Sure an’ a woman might do worse. But Mike says, he says to me, ‘Now, Mother, you do be talkin’ nonsense—the Doctor ain’t for the loikes of me.’”
I can laugh now at the rebuffs I met on account of my youth, not only when in College, but even when practising in U——, but it was hard to laugh at them then. Hence, I suppose, the dignity I instinctively assumed to make up for my short stature and lack of years. I learned, toward the close of my medical course, that it had been customary among the students to speak of me as “the dignified little Miss Arnold.” This dignity was no pose. I was dreadfully in earnest, and felt keenly this drawback to success. There was Miss Wilkins in the same class, no older than I as a doctor, but her years and her spectacles were passports to immediate acceptance, and she got credit for being wise where I was scarcely tolerated. Exasperation was no name for it! I lost one obstetrical case in my third year just because of this: After I had made my first visit, the patient sent me a polite note saying her husband was unwilling to go so far as my boarding-place for a doctor; that she would have liked to have me, and hoped I wouldn’t be offended—all a pretense—she was afraid to trust herself in my hands. Under this suddenly terminated record in my note-book I wrote with a sigh, “Oh, for the bonnet and spectacles of Miss Wilkins!” Even within a few months of graduation, while shopping for a cloak, I was chagrined to have the saleswoman tell the taller, but younger, girl who, accompanying me, acted as spokesman, “Oh, you will have to take her into the misses’ department.” The “misses’ department,” indeed! and I almost ready to take my degree! and I would have to be taken in—I could not even go there myself! It amuses me now to recall what a sore point this was with me.
During my second year, Sister came on to Boston to take up nursing. What delight when she landed there! She looked so pretty, and I was so overjoyed to have her there, so proud of her, so eager to show her about and introduce her to my friends! She had been over to the hospital only a week when one day, between lectures, one of the young men came to me and said, “Miss Arnold, there’s an awful nice little thing out in the hall wants to see you.” Just then another rushed up and said, “Miss Arnold, if you’re not in here, you’re out in the hall, and you want to see yourself.” I ran out and found Kate in her nurse’s garb, smiling, blushing, and enjoying having these young men dance attendance on her. I was flattered that they had seen so marked a resemblance when she was so much more attractive than I.
Not wishing to pledge herself to the two-year course, Kate stayed at the hospital only during the probationer’s term, deciding that she would go home and say Yes to the wooer to whom distance was lending enchantment. But she occupied herself with private nursing in and around Boston till I went home in June. Once she just missed an opportunity to go as companion to the invalid wife of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, but an unkind Providence prevented—she having accepted a case in that city. How I bewailed her untimely absence—actually to have been in the same house with the dear Autocrat! I was almost tempted to go myself—medicine or no medicine.