To prove the frequency of these accidental slips, it is impossible to resist the present temptation of introducing a few more, that occur to memory in the present recital. A lad upon the borders of Northamptonshire, being sent in the night to a medical practitioner at Banbury, and calling him out of bed, told him, “he must come immediately to his mistress, for she had got a Vistula!”——“Where? In ano?” “No, Zir, in the next parish to’t.”
In an excursion to Surrey, I was solicited in a parish near Chertsey, to give my advice to a master carpenter there, who had been a long time indisposed; but my prescription having had the desired effect, and the poor man getting abroad, he very gratefully declared to all his friends, “I was the best musician that ever came into the country.”—In the county of Berks, an elderly woman came to consult me upon the bad state of her daughter’s health; and after animadverting upon symptoms, told me in a whisper, “that her daughter was to have been married to a young man some time since; but something happening to break it off, she really believed ’twas nature turned inward in her.”
Paying a visit, in my earlier days, to the lady of a good old country alderman of a borough in Hertfordshire, she, after many aukward apologies for the indelicacy of the subject, tremblingly told me, “she had been very uneasy for some days, with a violent heat in her firmament.”—By way of suppressing those risible emotions in my disposition I have before described, I, for a moment, changed the subject, by enquiring the health of her husband; to which she replied, with thanks, “he was exceedingly well, but gone to make an exerescence into the country;” plunged deeper in difficulty, and nearer the laugh than before, which was now become hard to suppress, I applied myself to her snuff-box, then on the table, and passing a few encomiums on its neatness, she said, it was very much admired, being a gypsey’s pimple set in pinch-gut.
You will, no doubt, be now prepared for such unexpected misapplication of words, such sublimity of expression, and regulate the rigidity of your frontal muscles accordingly; when called to a patient, let your personal address and behaviour be modelled entirely by the state of his property; if he is your superior in rank and condition, every action of yours must denote it most strikingly;—you approach with respect—you dictate with submission—your mildness and affected penetration must be perceptible in all your enquiries, making the most scrupulous observations how far you seem to gain upon the credulity and good opinion of your subject, taking leave with all those attracting expressions of tenderness and sympathy, (highly tinctured with respect) that may give your patient a favourable idea of the integrity, it can never be your interest to possess.
On the contrary, when your advice and assistance is required to a patient, whose feelings are equally wounded by bodily affliction and the barbed arrow of adversity, you may safely reverse the whole mode of behaviour, and put into practice your personal pride, even to perfect impudence. This will be in many respects a consistency of conduct; it will be convincing them, as you have nothing to hope from their affluence, you have certainly nothing to fear from their poverty.
Let what will be the condition of your patient, you are not to act as some few conscientious practitioners do, explaining what you conceive to be the nature of the case, original cause of complaint, or from what operation you expect expeditious relief; this may be the best practice with those unfashionable formal old fellows, who received their medical instructions near half a century since, and pique themselves upon what they call their integrity; but it will be perfectly illiberal in you, who have received a more modern, and polished education. Ambiguity, and true medical mystery, will be your best guide upon every occasion; by not naming the case, or cause of complaint, you can never be accused of having mistaken it; and by letting the property of the medicine you administer remain a matter of secrecy with all but yourself, you reserve the incontrovertible power of saying, “it has had the very effect you intended,” whether it operates by vomit, stool, urine, perspiration, or sleep: these are precautions a wise man always takes, a fool never, and may be deemed something similar to the conduct of Bayes’s troops in the Rehearsal, who, the warlike messenger said, “were stealing a march in stilts.”
During the indisposition of your patient, ’tis your duty to think much more of the emolument that will arise from the protraction of his case, than the expedience of his cure. You must have it ever in mind, that he has paid you the the greatest compliment one man can possibly pay another on earth; he has placed an implicit confidence, and entrusted you with the care of his constitution and the key of his cash; in fact, he has put both his life and property into your hands; and the respect you owe to self-preservation renders it necessary you make the most of both. Let your attachment to his health and interest be demonstrated by the frequency of your attendance; it will be impossible for you to give a greater proof of your disinterested friendship, than by your large and constant supplies of different medicines; too great a quantity, too great a variety cannot be introduced; they all tend to a promotion of your emolument, and the sum total of your bill will be considered a striking proof of your merit and assiduity.
If you find the family and friends not perfectly satisfied with your conduct, that there is the least coolness and discontent perceptible, or symptoms of present or approaching danger, strongly recommend the presence of a better opinion in the form of a physician; this will prove an exertion of the soundest policy—double the quantity of medicines will be thrown into his prescription for the promotion of your interest, an act that the present danger will amply justify, and should the unhappy victim be doomed
“To pass that bourne,
From whence no traveller returns,”