"Pray, explain yourself."
"Nothing is easier. In the first days of your illness, when your life was in danger, I was your dearest friend; as you began to get better, I was your good Bouvart; and now I am Mr. Bouvart: depend upon it you are quite recovered."
In fact, the affection of a patient for his physician is very like the love a candidate for a borough has for an individual elector—he is very grateful to him, till he has got all he wants out of him. The medical practitioner is unwise not to recognize this fact. Common prudence enjoins him to act as much as possible on the maxim of "accipe dum dolet"—"take your fee while your patient is in pain."
But though physicians have always held themselves open to take as much as they can get, their ordinary remuneration has been fixed in divers times by custom, according to the locality of their practice, the rank of their patients, the nature of the particular services rendered, and such other circumstances. In China the rule is "no cure, no pay," save at the Imperial court, where the physicians have salaries that are cut off during the continuance of royal indisposition. For their sakes it is to be hoped that the Emperor is a temperate man, and does not follow the example of George the Fourth, who used to drink Maraschino between midnight and four o'clock in the morning; and then, when he awoke with a furred tongue, from disturbed sleep, used to put himself under the hands of his doctors. Formerly the medical officers of the English monarch were paid by salary, though doubtless they were offered, and were not too proud to accept, fees as well. Coursus de Gungeland, Edward the Third's apothecary, had a pension of sixpence a-day—a considerable sum at that time; and Ricardus Wye, the surgeon of the same king, had twelve-pence a day, and eight marks per annum. "Duodecim denarios per diem, et octo marcas per annum, pro vadiis suis pro vitâ." In the royal courts of Wales, also, the fees of surgeons and physicians were fixed by law—a surgeon receiving, as payment for curing a slight wound, only the blood-stained garments of the injured person; but for healing a dangerous wound he had the bloody apparel, his board and lodging during the time his services were required, and one hundred and eighty pence.
At a very early period in England a doctor looked for his palm to be crossed with gold, if his patient happened to be a man of condition. In Henry VIII.'s reign a Cambridge physician was presented by the Earl of Cumberland with a fee of £1—but this was at least double what a commoner would then have paid. Stow complains that while in Holland half-a-crown was looked upon as a proper remuneration for a single visit paid by a skilled physician, the medical practitioners of London scorned "to touch any metal but gold."
It is no matter of uncertainty what the physician's ordinary fee was at the close of the sixteenth and the commencement of the seventeenth century. It was ten shillings, as is certified by the following extract from "Physick lies a-bleeding: the Apothecary turned Doctor"—published in 1697:—
"Gallipot—Good sir, be not so unreasonably passionate and I'll tell you. Sir, the Pearl Julep will be 6s. 8d., Pearls being dear since our clipt money was bought. The Specific Bolus, 4s. 6d., I never reckon less; my master in Leadenhall Street never set down less, be it what it would. The Antihysterick Application 3s. 6d. (a common one is but 2s. 6d.), and the Anodyne Draught 3s. 4d.—that's all, sir; a small matter and please you, sir, for your lady. My fee is what you please, sir. All the bill is but 18s.
"Trueman—Faith, then, d'ye make a but at it? I do suppose, to be very genteel, I must give you a crown.
"Gallipot—If your worship please; I take it to be a fair and an honest bill.
"Trueman—Do you indeed? But I wish you had called a doctor, perhaps he would have advised her to have forebore taking anything, as yet at least, so I had saved 13s. in my pocket."