The parents of the child were among my most confidential, not to say influential, friends. If there was a family within the whole of my medical circuit with whom my word was law, it was this. Yet after all they were ignorant, especially of themselves; and such people always were and always will be credulous. They would open their ears, not only to the thousand and one insinuations of malice and envy, which at times are ventured against a young physician,—especially if he is going ahead, and as they say "getting rich" too fast, and thus securing more than they believe to be his share of public popularity;—but to the still larger number, if possible, of weak criticisers in his practice.
My friend's residence, moreover, was in a neighborhood contiguous to quacks and quackery, in the pretensions to which there were many believers. These dupes of ignorance and assurance were ever and anon filling the heads of my "patrons" with their stories of wonderful cures, in cases almost exactly like that of my own little patient, and urging the poor half-distracted parents to try something new—either medicine or physician. They would appeal to their feelings by asking them how they could be willing, as parents,—however great might be their confidence in me as a physician,—to let a darling child lie, day after day, and yet make no extra effort to save it.
Their appeals were not wholly ineffective; indeed, what else could have been expected? My first suspicion of any thing radically wrong, arose from a decidedly unexpected effect from a little medicine I had previously ordered. It seemed quite clear to my mind that a neutralizing agent had been at work somehow, by design or otherwise. And yet I shrunk from making an inquiry. In the end, however, I found myself morally compelled to do so. The results were very nearly what I had feared, and what might have been expected.
One of the reliabilities of the wise ones of the neighborhood went by the name of the "Indian" doctor. Whether in addition to a very little Indian blood he was half or three-fourths Spanish, Portuguese, or Canadian, I never knew, for I never took pains to inquire. But he had Indian habits. He was at times intemperate and vicious. No one who knew him would have trusted him with a sixpence of his own honest earnings, at least any longer than he was within his sight or reach. Yet many people would and did trust him with their own lives and the lives of their children.
There was one redeeming circumstance in connection with the history of this Indian doctor. He would never prescribe for the sick when in a state of intoxication. He knew, in this respect, his own weakness. But then it must be confessed he was not often free from intoxication. He was almost always steeped in cider or spirits. He was seldom, if ever, properly a sane or even a steady man.
On pressing the parents of the sick child more closely than usual, they frankly owned that though they had not of themselves called in the Indian doctor, they had permitted Mrs. A. B. to invite him in, and had permitted the child to take a little of his medicine.
The secret was now fully revealed, and it was no longer a matter of wonder with me, why poison did not work well against poison. The wonder was why, together, we had not killed the poor child. And yet it was by no means certain that the Indian's prescription was of much force, save the few drops of alcohol which it contained, for all his medicine was to be taken in alcohol.
I stated to the parents the probable issues—that unless the child possessed more than ordinary tenacity of life, it must ultimately sink under the load it was compelled to sustain. But to our great surprise—certainly my own—it survived; and, though it was suspended for weeks between life and death, it finally recovered.
The most mortifying circumstance of all was, that this miserable mongrel of a man had the credit of curing a child that only survived because it was tough and strong enough to resist the destructive tendency of two broadside fires—mine and his own. But medical men are compelled to put up with a great many things which, of course, they would not prefer. They must take the world as it is—as the world does the corps of physicians. They must calculate for deductions and drawbacks; and what they calculate on, they are pretty sure to experience. But, like other men with other severe trials, they have their reward.