The father of the late Judge Fletcher of the Common Pleas was an actual physician at Mount Melec, about seven miles from my father’s. He was a smart, intelligent, and very humorous, but remarkably diminutive doctor. He attended my father in his last moments, in conjunction with the family practitioner, Doctor Dennis Mulhall, whose appearance exactly corresponded with that of Doctor Slop, save that his paunch was doubly capacious, and his legs, in true symmetry with his carcase, helped to waddle him into a room. He was a matter-of-fact doctor, and despised anatomy. His features had been so confused and entangled together by that unbeautifying disorder, the smallpox, (which I have so often alluded to,) that it almost required a chart to find their respective stations.
These two learned gentlemen attended my poor father with the greatest assiduity, and daily prescribed for him a certain portion of every drug the Stradbally apothecary could supply: but these were not very numerous; and as every thing loses its vigour by age, so the Stradbally drugs, having been some years waiting for customers (like the landlord of the Red Cow in “John Bull”), of course fell off in their efficacy, till at length they each became, what the two doctors ultimately turned my poor father into—a caput mortuum. Notwithstanding the drugs and the doctors, indeed, my father held out nearly ten days; but finally, as a matter of course, departed this world. I was deeply and sincerely grieved. I loved him affectionately, and never after could reconcile myself to either of his medical attendants. I had overheard their last consultation, and from that time to this, am of opinion, that one doctor is as good as, if not better than, five hundred. I shall never forget the dialogue. After discussing the weather and prevalence of diseases in the county, they began to consult.—“What do you say to the pulveres Jacobi?” said Dr. Mulhall (the family physician).
“We are three days too late,” smirked Doctor Fletcher.
“What think you then of cataplasmus, or the flies?—Eh! Doctor, eh! the flies?” said Mulhall.
“The flies won’t rise in time,” replied Doctor Fletcher:—“too late again!”
“I fear so,” said Mulhall.
“’Tis a pity, Doctor Mulhall, you did not suggest blistering breast and spine sooner: you know it was not my business, as I was only called in:—I could not duly suggest.”
“Why,” replied Doctor Mulhall, “I thought of it certainly, but I was unwilling to alarm the family by so definitive an application, unless in extremis.”
“We’re in extremis now,” said Doctor Fletcher—“he! he!”
“Very true—very true,” rejoined Doctor Mulhall; “but Nature is too strong for art; she takes her way in spite of us!”