“When I tell them they must go to the hospital, they always say ‘I haven’t time: I want to stay and mind my traps.’ ”
The Doctor hates above all things—as I have indicated—to leave a wound open, or a malady half-treated, and hustle on. It is the great drawback and exasperation in his work that the interval before he sees the patient again must be so long. He mourns whenever he has to pull a tooth that might be saved if he could wait to fill it.
He is always working against time, against the sea, against ignorance, against a want of charity on the part of nominal Christians who ought to help him instead of carping and denouncing.
But he is working with all honest and sincere men, all who are true to the high priesthood of science, all who are on the side of the angels.
One man thus describes his affliction, letting the Doctor draw his own deductions:
“Like a little round ball the pain will start, sir; then it will full me inside; and the only rest I get is to crumple meself down.”
An unhappy woman reciting the history of her complaint declared: “The last doctor said I had an impression of the stomach and was full of glams.”
“Bless God!” exclaimed another, speaking of her children. “There’s nothing the matter with ’em. They be’s off carrying wood. They just coughs and heaves, that’s all.”
One mother, asked what treatment she was administering to her infant replied: “Oh, I give ’er nothing now. Just plenty of cold water and salts and spruce beer; ne’er drop o’ grease.”
When there is no doctor to be had the services of the seventh son of a seventh son are in demand.