he next curiosity to an author who did not write his own book, passing over the authors who really did write books by other people, is, perhaps, the physician who scorned to take fees. Mr. Tuckerman has pretty well exhausted the subject of Doctors. Let me notice how few of them resemble those proto-Christian physicians, Cosmas and Damian, who won the glorious name of Anargyri, or the ‘feeless,’ because out of their abundant charity they gave ‘advice gratis,’ which, it must be said, is a commodity often worth the price it costs when you get it for nothing.
Those last-named amiable physicians were Arabians by birth, and among those people some curious ideas still prevail touching the relations between medical men and patients. When the late Dr. Hogg was travelling with Lamartine in the East, it was the physician’s happiness to cure, of a very horrible disease, a poor and pious Arab who had been reduced almost to despair. The cure was slow, but at last it was perfect; and the gratitude of the Arab to God, the Prophet, and Dr. Hogg was beyond all bounds. The convalescent waited on his mortal benefactor, and told him that he was the greatest of the wonders of the world. The medico, fancying the grateful fellow might embarrass himself by overstraining his means, in order to evince his gratitude, told him that all had been done for the love of God and the good of a fellow-creature, and that nothing more was to be said about it. But the Arab had much more to say about it. ‘God,’ he remarked, ‘had conferred upon the Christian doctor a power beyond that possessed by any other man. The Prophet had permitted him to find a remedy for the maladies which had beset one of the faithful. Gratitude, taking the form of cash payment, was therefore indispensable.’ ‘I need no payment,’ said the doctor. ‘Just so, Effendi,’ replied the countryman of Cosmas and Damian; ‘it is so, I understand it. But the chief of doctors will not be ungrateful for the power he has been permitted to exercise. Behold the servant whom he has been allowed to make whole. Let the Effendi show his thankfulness by bestowing on his servant bakshish.’ Between these two extremes of physicians altogether declining fees, and patients requesting them from physicians as testimonies of gratitude for cure almost miraculously wrought, modern practice has established itself on a pretty good basis. But the old theory, yet not the old reality as to fees, still exists. The honorarium is slipped into the physician’s hand with an air of there being nothing in it, and that unworldly person often looks like Cosmas and Damian, as if he had taken nothing by it.
A question of health connects itself closely with the subject of the next essay, on Holidays. Many a soldier in the noble army of workers owes much of his health to the keeping of holidays. Mr. Tuckerman regrets that his country does not take rest and rejoice on some common national holiday at least once a year. Now, all Christian nations have one that they may celebrate once a week. But some among us are doing their conscientious best to turn the joyous festival into a gloomy fast. God granted the day, but some among us misinterpret the meaning of the grant, obstruct rest and enjoyment, and only change one sort of labour for another. Let all the nation go up and praise the Lord; but, for
‘Other things mild Heav’n a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.’
The making of a holiday rendered famous for ever a philosopher whose reputation would not have spread so widely through his philosophy. When Anaxagoras was dying he was asked if he had any particular desire that should be fulfilled. ‘Ay,’ said the Clazomenian, ‘on the anniversary of my death let all the boys have a holiday.’ Thence arose the Anaxagorica, festivals in which the boys rejoiced, not that Anaxagoras had died on that day, but that he had lived during many years of usefulness before it. Mr. Bright never shook the faith of his own followers so much as when he voted against the shortening of the hours of labour of women and children in the cotton mills. The contrast between the ancient and the modern philosopher is not to the disadvantage of the heathen. But there are some persons who are averse to much leisure time on working-days, and to any air of enjoyment on Sundays. A Scotchman, who had gone back to his country after a long absence, declared after going to kirk that the whole kingdom was on the road to perdition. ‘The people,’ he said, ‘used to be reserved and solemn on the Sabbath, but now they look as happy on that day as on any other.’
ith regard to what is asserted in this volume respecting the judicial and legal excellence of modern times compared with a past period, the assertion cannot be admitted without a certain reserve. We may look back at those old Brehon laws which St. Patrick himself could not amend or even make more clear, when he attempted to be for them what Coke afterwards was upon Lyttleton. For instance, if a Brehon judge were to utter an absurdity—were he, for instance, to say that he was inclined to believe in the folly of a criminal, which folly had led to crime, and were the judge to inflict a ridiculously light sentence in consequence, the ‘truth of nature,’ as the phrase then ran, would have been violated, and a blotch would fix itself on the face of the judge for ever!