"Then, sir—why—oh, yarr! here's the pain again—why did you do it?"
"Confound you, man!" answered the surgeon testily. "Why did I do it?—why, didn't you ask me to put a seton in your neck?"
Of course the surgical treatment employed by Abernethy in this case was the right one; but he was so nettled with the fellow's impudence and unmanly lamentations, that he could not forbear playing off upon him a barbarous jest.
If for this outbreak of vindictive humour the reader is inclined to call Abernethy a savage, let his gift of £50 to the widow lady, to pay for her sick child's carriage exercise, be remembered. Apropos of £50, Dr. Wilson of Bath sent a present of that sum to an indigent clergyman, against whom he had come in the course of practice. The gentleman who had engaged to convey the gift to the unfortunate priest said, "Well, then, I'll take the money to him to-morrow." "Oh, my dear sir," said the doctor, "take it to him to-night. Only think of the importance to a sick man of one good night's rest!"
Side by side with stories of the benevolence of "the Faculty," piquant anecdotes of their stinginess might be told. This writer knew formerly a grab-all-you-can-get surgeon, who was entertaining a few professional brethren at a Sunday morning's breakfast, when a patient was ushered into the ante-room of the surgeon's bachelor chambers, and the surgeon himself was called away to the visitor. Unfortunately he left the folding-doors between the breakfast-room and the ante-room ajar, and his friends sitting in the former apartment overheard the following conversation:
"Well, my friend, what's the matter?"—the surgeon's voice.
The visitor's voice—"Plaze, yer honner, I'm a pore Hirish labourer, but I can spill a bit, and I read o' yer honner's moighty foine cure in the midical jarnal—the Lancet. And I've walked up twilve miles to have yer honner cure me. My complaint is ——"
Surgeon's voice, contemptuously—"Oh, my good man, you've made a mistake. You'd better go to the druggist's shop nearest your home, and he'll do for you all you want. You couldn't pay me as I require to be paid."
Visitor's voice, proudly and triumphantly—"Och, an' little ye know an Irish gintleman, dochter, if ye think he'd be beholden to the best of you for a feavor. Here's a bit o' gould—nocht liss nor a tin shillin' piece, but I've saved it up for ye, and ye'll heve the whole, tho' its every blissed farthing I hev."
The surgeon's voice altered. The case was gone into. The prescription was written. The poor Irish drudge rose to go, when the surgeon, with that delicate quantity of conscience that rogues always have to make themselves comfortable upon, said, "Now, you say you have no more money, my friend. Well, the druggist will charge you eighteenpence for the medicine I have ordered there. So there's eighteenpence for you out of your half-sovereign."