Volume VIII Part 14 (2/2)
LETTER XXI
MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.
WEDNESDAY, THREE O'CLOCK.
I will proceed where I left off in my last.
As soon as I had seen Mowbray mounted, I went to attend upon poor Belton; whom I found in dreadful agonies, in which he awoke, after he generally does.
The doctor came in presently after, and I was concerned at the scene that pa.s.sed between them.
It opened with the dying man's asking him, with melancholy earnestness, if nothing--if nothing at all could be done for him?
The doctor shook his head, and told him, he doubted not.
I cannot die, said the poor man--I cannot think of dying. I am very desirous of living a little longer, if I could but be free from these horrible pains in my stomach and head. Can you give me nothing to make me pa.s.s one week--but one week, in tolerable ease, that I may die like a man, if I must die!
But, Doctor, I am yet a young man; in the prime of my years--youth is a good subject for a physician to work upon--Can you do nothing--nothing at all for me, Doctor?
Alas! Sir, replied his physician, you have been long in a bad way. I fear, I fear, nothing in physic can help you!
He was then out of all patience: What, then, is your art, Sir?--I have been a pa.s.sive machine for a whole twelvemonth, to be wrought upon at the pleasure of you people of the faculty.--I verily believe, had I not taken such doses of nasty stuff, I had been now a well man--But who the plague would regard physicians, whose art is to cheat us with hopes while they help to destroy us?--And who, not one of you, know any thing but by guess?
Sir, continued he, fiercely, (and with more strength of voice and coherence, than he had shown for several hours before,) if you give me over, I give you over.--The only honest and certain part of the art of healing is surgery. A good surgeon is worth a thousand of you. I have been in surgeons' hands often, and have always found reason to depend upon their skill; but your art, Sir, what is it?--but to daub, daub, daub; load, load, load; plaster, plaster, plaster; till ye utterly destroy the appet.i.te first, and the const.i.tution afterwards, which you are called in to help. I had a companion once, my dear Belford, thou knewest honest Blomer, as pretty a physician he would have made as any in England, had he kept himself from excess in wine and women; and he always used to say, there was nothing at all but the pick-pocket parade in the physician's art; and that the best guesser was the best physician.
And I used to believe him too--and yet, fond of life, and fearful of death, what do we do, when we are taken ill, but call ye in? And what do ye do, when called in, but nurse our distempers, till from pigmies you make giants of them? and then ye come creeping with solemn faces, when ye are ashamed to prescribe, or when the stomach won't bear its natural food, by reason of your poisonous potions,--Alas, I am afraid physic can do no more for him!--Nor need it, when it has brought to the brink of the grave the poor wretch who placed all his reliance in your cursed slops, and the flattering hopes you gave him.
The doctor was out of countenance; but said, if we could make mortal men immortal, and would not, all this might be just.
I blamed the poor man; yet excused him to the physician. To die, dear Doctor, when, like my poor friend, we are so desirous of life, is a melancholy thing. We are apt to hope too much, not considering that the seeds of death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up, till, like rampant weeds, they choke the tender flower of life; which declines in us as those weeds flourish. We ought, therefore, to begin early to study what our const.i.tutions will bear, in order to root out, by temperance, the weeds which the soil is most apt to produce; or, at least, to keep them down as they rise; and not, when the flower or plant is withered at the root, and the weed in its full vigour, expect, that the medical art will restore the one, or destroy the other; when that other, as I hinted, has been rooting itself in the habit from the time of our birth.
This speech, Bob., thou wilt call a prettiness; but the allegory is just; and thou hast not quite cured me of the metaphorical.
Very true, said the doctor; you have brought a good metaphor to ill.u.s.trate the thing. I am sorry I can do nothing for the gentleman; and can only recommend patience, and a better frame of mind.
Well, Sir, said the poor angry man, vexed at the doctor, but more at death, you will perhaps recommend the next succession to the physician, when he can do no more; and, I suppose, will send your brother to pray by me for those virtues which you wish me.
It seems the physician's brother is a clergyman in the neighbourhood.
I was greatly concerned to see the gentleman thus treated; and so I told poor Belton when he was gone; but he continued impatient, and would not be denied, he said, the liberty of talking to a man, who had taken so many guineas of him for doing nothing, or worse than nothing, and never declined one, though he know all the time he could do him no good.
It seems the gentleman, though rich, is noted for being greedy after fees! and poor Belton went on raving at the extravagant fees of English physicians, compared with those of the most eminent foreign ones. But, poor man! he, like the Turks, who judge of a general by his success, (out of patience to think he must die,) would have wors.h.i.+pped the doctor, and not grudged thee times the sum, could he have given him hopes of recovery.
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