The patient save, but starve the doctor.
This would be abominable. Physicians, in general, are a hale hearty race of men, as, indeed, must be readily conceived from their prudent maxims in regard to the preservation of their own health:—they take no physic. No; they are too well acquainted with its tendency. Now, to starve so sturdy and powerful a body, when his majesty is in want of such subjects to check the ambitious strides of restless Buonaparte, as appears from the king’s declaration of this day (May the 16th, 1803,) in preference to letting their miserable patients expire, whom Providence evidently intended should die off, is, I trust, too absurd and unreasonable an idea to be admitted.
Like Perkinites, they find Mecenases.
The Perkineans have no cause to boast of the extent of their patronage, for the poor tawny reptile chimney-sweepers have of late interested the friends of humanity in their behalf quite as much. Your worships will derive from this circumstance a very pleasant source for sneering at our opponents, which I am sure you will gladly embrace, whenever opportunity presents.
Except by knaves retired from practice.
This, gentlemen, is a circumstance of no small moment, and which I trust you will see the necessity of looking at with some seriousness. Some of our profession have, to their eternal disgrace, since their retirement on their fortunes, deserted our cause, and are now to be found in the ranks of our enemies. These fellows have the presumption to suggest that their duty to the interests of the community supersedes that which they owe to their old brethren, the unreasonableness of which sentiment I conceive to be self-evident, and therefore shall not trouble myself to prove it. Several have even addressed to the Perkinean Institution communications in favor of the metallic tractors, for publication, three of which are already laid before the public. The first on this list is Mr Lyster, late of Dublin, who having been above twenty years senior surgeon of the Dublin hospital, retired to Bath, where he now seems even to take delight in benefitting the mean and miserable poor, to wanton injury of his own dear brethren. To show the extent of his malice, he has, in his communication to the Perkinean Society, introduced statements of remarkable cures by the tractors; among others one of total blindness of many years duration, in which all medical skill had previously failed; and, to wind up this tale of infamy, he has even ventured to censure, indirectly, my great champion, Dr Haygarth, and to hint that his proceedings were not accompanied with honorable intentions!
Next on this trio list are Mr Yatman, of Chelsea, and Dr Fuller, of Upper Brook street; the conduct of both of whom is equally, if not more reprehensible than Lyster’s. These two also call in the lame, the halt, and the blind, and, as if to spite their brethren who have drugs to sell, cure them with the tractors without fee or reward! Such conduct is so atrocious that if your worships should think proper to have them indicted, and Mr Erskine or Mr Garrow object to defend the cause of such clients, I, counsellor Caustic (remember I am LL.D.) will manage it for you, and, provided I can but get that same jury which decided that captain Macnamara was not accessory to the death of Col. Montgomery, I will procure the defendants to be sent to Botany Bay, or at least as far as Coventry.