The Doctor's Christmas Eve

by James Lane Allen

More may be learned about the doctor by an inspection of his rooms. Of these there were three, with a small fourth chamber as an ell in the house: in this ell there was a single bed, and here he sometimes slept—as nearly outside the house as it was possible to lie and still to be within it.

The room in which he now worked was his library; communicating through an open door was his office; beyond the office through another open door was a third room in which were stored many personal articles of indoor and outdoor use.

Beginning with his office, you derived the knowledge which any physician's and surgeon's office, if modern and complete, should afford. On one wall hung his diploma from a New York Medical College; on another a diploma from Vienna for post-graduate study and hospital work.

The rooms taken together bore testimony in their entire equipment to a general outside truth: that the physician who lived in them was not a country doctor because he had been crowded by abler members of the profession out of the cities where there are many into the country where there are none: and this fact in turn had its larger historic significance.

Almost within a generation a radical change has taken place in the relation of town and country as regards the profession of medicine. The old barriers which half a century ago separated the sick in the streets from the sick in fields and forests have been swept away. The city physician now twenty-five miles away can often arrive more quickly than a country doctor who lives five; and a surgeon can come in an hour who formerly needed half a day. But many now living with long memories can well remember the time when the country doctor ruled in his neighborhood as the priest in mediæval Europe swayed his parish. However remote, he was always sent for. His form was the very image of rescue, his face was the light of healing. As a consequence, the country often developed leaders in the profession. Instead of its being dependent upon the cities, these looked to the rural districts for many of the most skilful practitioners.

This was strikingly true from the earliest settlement of the West on that immense plateau of forest and grass land which has long since drawn to itself the notice of the world as the loveliness of Kentucky. It was on the southern boundary of this plateau, living in a pioneer hamlet and practising far and wide through a wilderness, that a country doctor became the father of ovarian surgery in the United States and won the reverence of the world of science and the gratitude of humanity. In another pioneer settlement one of the greatest of American lithotomists spread the lustre of his name and the goodness of his deeds over the whole country west of the Alleghany Mountains; and these were but two of those many country doctors who there for well-nigh a century were the reliance of their people: physicians, surgeons, diagnosticians, nurses, pharmacists, friends—all in one.

This powerful and brilliant tradition had descended to Dr. Birney, and he had worthily upheld it. In some respects he had solidly advanced it, notably in his treatment of children's diseases.

A second room, in which the articles of his personal life were kept, gave further knowledge of him as a man. Outside the windows there was a tennis court; he played tennis with his children and with young people of the neighborhood. You saw his racquet on the wall; and if you had opened a closet, you would have found the flannels and the shoes. Elsewhere on the wall you saw his reel. In season he liked to fish, when his patients also could go fishing, or at least were well enough to feel like going; and in the same closet you might have noted the residue of a fisherman's outfit. He fished not only for black bass, but for that mild pond and creek fish prized as a delicacy on Kentucky tables—a variety of the calico bass known in the local vocabulary as "newlight."

Still elsewhere you saw his game bag and bird gun—he liked to call it by the older word, fowling-piece. He hunted: quail, doves, wild duck. In another closet you would have been interested to discover his regalia as a member of the Order of Masons; and well placed beside it his uniform as a member of the State Guard—the two well placed there. When years before his neighbors had enrolled him in the Guard, they had saluted him as one more Kentucky Colonel. "I will submit to no official degradation," he had said; "I am already the Commander of the whole army of you on the field of your human Waterloo: salute your General!"

His library added its testimony as to other humanities. Scattered about on tables and mantel-piece were fine old pipes and boxes of cigars and playing-cards. There were poker chips, showing that the doctor had poker neighbors (where else if not there?), though whist was his game. You realized that he was a man at home among a people who loved play—must have play. On his sideboard were temperate decanters: he had sideboard neighbors. Altogether a human-looking room for much that is human; easy to enter, comfortable to stay in, hard to quit.