Part 8 (2/2)

Extr: Tarax: a a 3ss Misft: Elect: Cujus sum: 3j omni mane.

xviii. Sept. J. S.

Id: Anglie reddit: per me Carol: Arundin:

The same done into English by me. C. R.

FOR MISS DODD.

1. O Jupiter aid us!! Plummer's pill to be taken every night, 1 oz.

compound decoction of Aloes every morning.

8th Sept. J. S.

FOR MISS DODD.

2. O Jupiter aid us!! with Confection of Senna, Bitartrate of Potash, extract of Dandelion, of each half an ounce, let an electuary be mixed; of which let her take 1 drachm every morning.

18th Sept. J. S.

”Quite the courtier,” said Mrs. Dodd, delighted. Julia a.s.sented: she even added, with a listless yawn, ”I had no idea that a skeleton was such a gentlemanlike thing; I never saw one before.”

Mrs. Dodd admitted he was very thin.

”Oh no, mamma; 'thin' implies some little flesh. When he felt my pulse, a chill struck to my heart. Death in a black suit seemed to steal up to me, and lay a finger on my wrist: and mark me for his own.”

Mrs. Dodd forbade her to give way to such gloomy ideas; and expostulated firmly with her for judging learned men by their bodies. ”However,” said she, ”if the good, kind doctor's remedies do not answer his expectations and mine, I shall take you to London directly. I do hope papa will soon be at home.”

Poor Mrs. Dodd was herself slipping into a morbid state. A mother collecting Doctors! It is a most fascinating kind of connoisseurs.h.i.+p, grows on one like Drink; like Polemics; like Melodrama; like the Millennium; like any Thing.

Sure enough, the very next week she and Julia sat patiently at the morning levee of an eminent and t.i.tled London surgeon. Full forty patients were before them: so they had to wait and wait. At last they were ushered into the presence-chamber, and Mrs. Dodd entered on the beaten ground of her daughter's symptoms. The n.o.ble surgeon stopped her civilly but promptly. ”Auscultation will give us the clue,” said he, and drew his stethoscope. Julia shrank and cast an appealing look at her mother; but the impa.s.sive chevalier reported on each organ in turn without moving his ear from the key-hole: ”Lungs pretty sound,” said he, a little plaintively: ”so is the liver. Now for the----Hum? There is no kardiae insufficiency, I think, neither mitral nor tricuspid. If we find no tendency to hypertrophy we shall do very well. Ah! I have succeeded in diagnosing a slight diastolic murmur; very slight.” He deposited the instrument, and said, not without a certain shade of satisfaction that his research had not been fruitless, ”The heart is the peccant organ.”

”Oh, sir! is it serious?” said poor Mrs. Dodd.

”By no means. Try this” (he scratched a prescription which would not have misbecome the tomb of Cheops), ”and come again in a month.” Ting!

He struck a bell. That ”ting” said, ”Go, live, Guinea; and let another come.”

”Heart-disease now!” Said Mrs. Dodd, sinking back in her hired carriage, and the tears were in her patient eyes.

”My own, own mamma,” said Julia earnestly, ”do not distress yourself.

I have no disease in the world, but my old, old, old one, of being a naughty, wayward girl. As for you, mamma, you have resigned your own judgment to your inferiors, and that is both our misfortunes. Dear, dear mamma, do take me to a doctress next time, if you have not had enough.”

”To a what, love?”

”A she-doctor, then.”

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