"What would you do," bluntly inquired the surgeon, "if a man was brought to you with a broken leg?"
"Set it, sir," was the reply.
"Good—very good—you're a very pleasant, witty young man; and doubtless you can tell me what muscles of my body I should set in motion if I kicked you, as you deserve to be kicked, for your impertinence."
"You would set in motion," responded the youth, with perfect coolness, "the flexors and extensors of my right arm; for I should immediately knock you down."
If the gentlemen so sent forth to kill and cure were not overstocked with professional learning, they soon acquired a knowledge of their art in that best of all schools—experience. At the conclusion of the great war they were turned loose upon the country, and from their body came many of the best and most successful practitioners of every county of the kingdom. The race is fast dying out. A Waterloo banquet of medical officers, serving in our army at that memorable battle, would at the present time gather together only a small number of veterans. This writer can remember when they were plentiful; and, in company with two or three of the best of their class, he spent many of the happiest days of his boyhood. An aroma of old camp life hung about them. They rode better horses, and more boldly, than the other doctors round about. However respectable they might have become with increased years and prosperity, they retained the military knack of making themselves especially comfortable under any untoward combination of external circumstances. To gallop over a bleak heath, through the cold fog of a moonless December night; to sit for hours in a stifling garret by a pauper's pallet; to go for ten days without sleeping on a bed, without undressing, and with the wear of sixteen hours out of every twenty-four spent on horseback—were only features of "duty," and therefore to be borne manfully, and with generous endurance, at the time—and, in the retrospect, to be talked of with positive contentment and hilarity. They loved the bottle, too—as it ought to be loved: on fit occasions drinking any given quantity, and, in return, giving any quantity to drink; treating claret and the thinner wines with a levity at times savouring of disdain; but having a deep and unvarying affection for good sound port, and, at the later hours, very hot and very strong whisky and water, with a slice of lemon in each tumbler. How they would talk during their potations! What stories and songs! George the Fourth (even according to his own showing) had scarce more to do in bringing about the victory at Waterloo than they. Lord Anglesey's leg must have been amputated thrice; for this writer knew three surgeons who each—separately and by himself—performed the operation. But this sort of boasting was never indulged in before the —th tumbler.
May a word not be here said on the toping country doctor? Shame on these times! ten years hence one will not be able to find a bibulous apothecary, though search be made throughout the land from Dan to Beersheba! Sailors, amongst the many superstitions to which they cling with tenacity, retain a decided preference for an inebrious to a sober surgeon. Not many years since, in a fishing village on the eastern coast, there flourished a doctor in great repute amongst the poor; and his influence over his humble patients literally depended on the fact that he was sure, once in the four-and-twenty hours, to be handsomely intoxicated. Charles Dickens has told the public how, when he bought the raven immortalised in "Barnaby Rudge," the vendor of that sagacious bird, after enumerating his various accomplishments and excellences, concluded, "But, sir, if you want him to come out very strong, you must show him a drunk man." The simple villagers of Flintbeach had a firm faith in the strengthening effects of looking at a tipsy doctor. They always postponed their visits to Dr. Mutchkin till evening, because then they had the benefit of the learned man in his highest intellectual condition. "Dorn't goo to he i' the mornin', er can't doctor noways to speak on tills er's had a glass," was the advice invariably given to a stranger not aware of the doctor's little peculiarities.
Mutchkin was unquestionably a shrewd fellow, although he did his best to darken the light with which nature had endowned him. One day, accompanied by his apprentice, he visited a small tenant farmer who had been thrown on his bed with a smart attack of bilious fever. After looking at his patient's tongue and feeling his pulse, he said somewhat sharply:—
"Ah! 'tis no use doing what's right for you, if you will be so imprudent."
"Goodness, doctor, what do you mean?" responded the sick man; "I have done nothing imprudent."
"What!—nothing imprudent? Why, bless me, man, you have had green peas for dinner."