In speaking of a Greek gem representing Cupid and Pysche, one day, when driving in Wigtonshire with the late Dr. David Easton, a medical friend, he said I had not given the correct pronunciation of the names. Always willing to learn, I asked to be put right; whereupon, the doctor gravely informed me that I ought to have said—Cupped and Physic!
I have spoken of the kindness of medical men, such as Dr. Garth Wilkinson, to clergymen, artists, and literary men. I add one more expression of gratitude, which is a good modern instance:—
When at St. Helens, in Jersey, during his last illness, my friend Samuel Lover, the genial poet and artist, wrote the following lines to Dr. Dixon, his friend and physician. I first copied them some years ago from Lover’s MS. note-book, kindly lent me by his widow when I was engaged in the preparation of his life. Such cordial tributes are a good physician’s most highly-valued fees:—
“Whene’er your vitality
Is feeble in quality,
And you fear a fatality
May end the strife,
Then Dr. Joe Dickson
Is the man I would fix on
For putting new wicks on
The lamp of life.”
From the many varied facts and incidents adduced in these pages, it will be seen that, in anxiety or sorrow, the good family doctor is a true and sympathetic friend, whose services can never be paid by gold.
Next to religion, nothing is more precious or comforting than the sympathy of those who know and fully understand our sufferings, for, as my old favourite, Sir Thomas Browne, to whom I ever revert with renewed pleasure, truly and beautifully says:—“It is not the tears of our own eyes only, but of our friends also, that do exhaust the current of our sorrows, which, falling into many streams, runs more peaceably, and is contented with a narrower channel.”
