Papers from Overlook-House

by Frederic W. Beasley

His general history was not one that is uncommon in our land. Many a man of small education, but who has had a natural turn for the study of simple means for the cure of ordinary diseases in a country neighborhood has acquired considerable skill, and done more good, and far less evil, than could have been anticipated. In fact the ignorant often lean on such a man with special confidence. They prefer his services to those of the well-taught and meritorious physician. For they think it easily explicable, that the learned doctor should often cure the diseased. Books have taught him what medicines are needful for those who are sick. But around the quack there is a delightful cloud of mystery. His genius was surely born with him. He has stumbled on his remedies by some almost supernatural accident. And then there is the exciting and most pleasant doubt whether he has not had some dealings with the devil. You have moreover this advantage, that you acquire all the benefit of his compact with the evil one, without any guilt on your part. All that is evil lies on the head of the practitioner.

How noble the calling of the true physician! What more need we say of his office than that in every sick-room he can look to the Redeemer, and feel that he employs him to do, what he was continually doing by his own words when he was on the earth? "Without the power of miracles,"—I quote from memory words that fell from the lips of one very dear to me whose voice is no more heard on earth, and I fear I mar the sentence,—"Without the power of miracles, he goes about doing good, the blessed shadow of our Lord; and by him God gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, enables the lame to walk and raises up those almost fallen into the sleep of death."

As I write, the manly form of our family physician, the form that we laid in the grave a few years ago, rises before me. Oh! what unselfishness, what high sense of honor and professional duty, what compassion for human infirmities, what a grand and enduring perception of the brotherhood of man, of the one family of rich and poor, learned and ignorant, didst thou then learn, our dear kind friend, in thy innumerable ministrations! Literary men have too often indulged in cheap humor at the cost of the physician. It is easy to caricature anything grand and sacred. It is easy to cure in the pages of the novel the sick man who plays his pranks at the expense of the doctor, and eats his meat, and drinks his wine when the medical advice assures him that he must fast or die. Just imagine one of these literati to send for his physician in haste.

"Doctor," he exclaims, "it is well you have come! Do give me some relief."

"Wait a moment," exclaims the physician! "I have something to read to you."

"Read to me, doctor! Why I am ill,—alarmed. Depend upon it, I am very sick. Prescribe for me at once."

"Prescribe for you! Why hear what you wrote concerning physicians. If they are what you describe, you should never ask them to come near your sick bed."

"But I wrote only in jest. I described the pretender."

"No, my dear sir, your assault is without limitation. Your attack is against all men of my profession. Your words were adapted to aid the ignorant popular prejudice against our art. I will read to you."

I cannot but think that, in such a case, there are not a few writers of light literature, who would be forced to perceive the meanness of their assault on a noble profession.