“Patients are charged according to their supposed income, the income being indicated by the rental of the house in which they reside. The following are the charges usually made by medical practitioners:—
| Rentals. | |||
| £10 to £25 | £25 to £50 | £50 to £100 | |
| Ordinary Visit | 2s 6d to 3s 6d | 3s 6d to 5s | 5s to 7s 6d |
| Night Visit | Double an | Ordinary | Visit |
| Mileage beyond two miles from home | 1s 6d | 2s | 2s 6d |
| Detention per hour | 2s 6d to 3s 6d | 3s 6d to 5s | 5s to 7s 6d |
| Letters of Advice | Same charge | as for an Or- | dinary Visit |
| Attendance on Servants | 2s 6d | 2s 6d to 3s 6d | 3s 6d to 5s |
| Midwifery | 21s | 21s to 30s | 42s to 105s |
| Consultants. | |||
| Advice or visit alone | 21s | 21s | 21s |
| Advice or visit with another Practitioner | 21s | 21s to 42s | 21s to 42s |
| Mileage beyond two miles from home | 10s 6d | 10s 6d | 10s 6d |
“Special visits, i.e., of which due notice has not been given before the practitioner starts on his daily round, are charged at the rate of a visit and a half. Patients calling on the doctor are charged at the same rate as if visited by him.
“There are about 23,000 physicians and surgeons in the United Kingdom, or one to every 1,600 inhabitants.”
It has been my privilege to know several doctors intimately. Our family doctor when I was a boy in Paisley, was Dr. Kerr, a man far in advance of his day. He was the means of introducing a pure water supply to the town of Paisley, always strenuously urging the importance of sanitary matters and good drainage, when such things were then but little understood, and greatly neglected. Shortly after the water had been introduced to the houses, from Stanley, an old man—who had been accustomed to purchase water from a cart which went through the streets selling it from a barrel—on being asked how he liked the new water, replied indignantly, “Wha’s going to pay good siller for water that has neither smell nor taste?”
On one occasion, an elderly gentleman, who was slightly hypochondriac, consulted Dr. Kerr about his clothing, saying that he regulated the thickness of his flannels by the thermometer. Dr. Kerr, losing patience, said, “Can you not use the thermometer your Maker has put in your inside, and put on clothes when you are cold?”
Dr. Kerr’s son and assistant, whom we then called “the young doctor,” died a few years ago in Canada, over eighty years of age. No man could possibly have been more considerately kind, gentle, and tender-hearted. On one occasion, in 1841, when, in typhus fever, I was struggling for my life, he sat up with me for three whole consecutive nights, and brought me through. He ever kept himself abreast of the science of the day, and devoted his abilities and energies, con amore, to the benefitting of men’s souls as well as their bodies.
Another model village and country doctor, also an intimate friend of my parents, Dr. Campbell of Largs, I knew very well. Good, genial, and accomplished, he was a perfect gentleman, and equally at home dining with Sir Thomas Brisbane, or drinking a cup of tea at some old woman’s kitchen fireside. He read the Lancet, and tried all new medicines, and repeatedly, when going to London, at his request I procured the most recent instruments for him. He was intimate with Dr. Chalmers, Lord Jeffrey, Lord Moncrieff, Lord Cardwell, etc. In telling me of experiments with Perkin’s metallic tractors, and that the same results were obtained with wooden ones, showing the power of imagination, he gave me a recent curious illustration. He had lately had the old fashioned little panes of glass taken out of the windows of his house, and plate glass inserted. His mother, who did not know of the change, calling one afternoon, sat on an easy chair, close by the gable window, knitting. On suddenly looking round she said, “Oh John, I’ve been sitting all this time by an open window,” and forthwith she began to sneeze! She actually took cold, and even afterwards could scarcely be persuaded that it had not been an open window, for she said she felt the cold! The doctor told me of an old maiden lady who consulted him, and who, when he prescribed in a general way, insisted on knowing exactly what ailed her. He said she was only slightly nervous, and would soon be all right. This did not at all please her, and she at once loudly protested—“Me nervous! There is not a nerve in my whole body!”
A West India merchant, one of his patients whom I knew, he also told me, one day said to him, “Doctor, for forty years I never knew I had a stomach, and now I can think of nothing else!”