For the next month or two nothing of note happened to me, except indeed that the action for damages brought against me by Sir Thomas Colford was suddenly withdrawn. Although it never transpired publicly, I believe that the true reason of this collapse was that Sir John Bell flatly refused to appear in court and submit himself to further examination, and without Sir John Bell there was no evidence against me. But the withdrawal of this action did not help me professionally; indeed the fine practice which I was beginning to get together had entirely vanished away. Not a creature came near my consulting-room, and scarcely a creature called me in. The prosecution and the verdict of the jury, amounting as it did to one of “not proven” only, had ruined me. By now my small resources were almost exhausted, and I could see that very shortly the time would come when I should no longer know where to turn for bread for myself and my child.
One morning as I was sitting in my consulting-room, moodily reading a medical textbook for want of something else to do, the front door bell rang. “A patient at last,” I thought to myself with a glow of hope. I was soon undeceived, however, for the servant opened the door and announced Mr. Stephen Strong.
“How do you do, doctor?” he said briskly. “You will wonder why I am here at such an hour. Well, it is on business. I want you to come with me to see two sick children.”
“Certainly,” I said, and we started.
“Who are the children and what is the matter with them?” I asked presently.
“Son and daughter of a working boot-maker named Samuels. As to what is the matter with them, you can judge of that for yourself,” he replied with a grim smile.
Passing into the poorer part of the city, at length we reached a cobbler’s shop with a few pairs of roughly-made boots on sale in the window. In the shop sat Mr. Samuels, a dour-looking man of about forty.
“Here is the doctor, Samuels,” said Strong.
“All right,” he answered, “he’ll find the missus and the kids in there and a pretty sight they are; I can’t bear to look at them, I can’t.”
Passing through the shop, we went into a back room whence came a sound of wailing. Standing in the room was a careworn woman and in the bed lay two children, aged three and four respectively. I proceeded at once to my examination, and found that one child, a boy, was in a state of extreme prostration and fever, the greater part of his body being covered with a vivid scarlet rash. The other child, a girl, was suffering from a terribly red and swollen arm, the inflammation being most marked above the elbow. Both were cases of palpable and severe erysipelas, and both of the sufferers had been vaccinated within five days.