Part 15 (1/2)
Burke's pun on Brocklesby's name is a good instance of the elaborate ingenuity with which the great Whig orator adorned his conversation and his speeches. Pre-eminent amongst the advertising quacks of the day was Dr. Rock. It was therefore natural that Brocklesby should express some surprise at being accosted by Burke as Dr. Rock, a t.i.tle at once infamous and ridiculous. ”Don't be offended. Your name is Rock,” said Burke, with a laugh; ”I'll prove it algebraically: _Brock--b = Rock_; or, Brock less _b_ makes Rock.” Dr. Brocklesby, on the occasion of giving evidence in a trial, had the ill fortune to offend the presiding judge, who, amongst other prejudices not uncommon in the legal profession, cherished a lively contempt for medical evidence. ”Well, gentlemen of the jury,” said the n.o.ble lawyer in his summing up, ”what's the medical testimony? First we have a Dr.
Rocklesby or--Brocklesby. What does he say? _First of all he_ swears--_he's a physician_.”
Abernethy is a by-word for rudeness and even brutality of manner; but he was as tender and generous as a man ought to be, as a man of great intelligence usually is. The stories current about him are nearly all fictions of the imagination; or, where they have any foundation in fact, relate to events that occurred long before the hero to whom they are tacked by anecdote-mongers had appeared on the stage. He was eccentric--but his eccentricities always took the direction of common sense; whereas the extravagances attributed to him by popular gossip are frequently those of a heartless buffoon. His time was precious, and he rightly considered that his business was to set his patients in the way of recovering their lost health--not to listen to their fatuous prosings about their maladies. He was therefore prompt and decided in checking the egotistic garrulity of valetudinarians. This candid expression of his dislike to unnecessary talk had one good result. People who came to consult him took care not to offend him by bootless prating. A lady on one occasion entered his consulting-room, and put before him an injured finger, without saying a word. In silence Abernethy dressed the wound, when instantly and silently the lady put the usual fee on the table, and retired. In a few days she called again, and offered the finger for inspection. ”Better?” asked the surgeon. ”Better,” answered the lady, speaking to him for the first time. Not another word followed during the rest of the interview. Three or four similar visits were made, at the last of which the patient held out her finger free from bandages and perfectly healed. ”Well?” was Abernethy's monosyllabic inquiry. ”Well,” was the lady's equally brief answer. ”Upon my soul, madam,” exclaimed the delighted surgeon, ”_you are the most rational woman I ever met with_.”
To curb his tongue, however, out of respect to Abernethy's humour, was an impossibility to John Philpot Curran. Eight times Curran (personally unknown to Abernethy) had called on the great surgeon; and eight times Abernethy had looked at the orator's tongue (telling him, by-the-by, that it was the most unclean and utterly abominable tongue in the world), had curtly advised him to drink less, and not abuse his stomach with gormandizing, had taken a guinea, and had bowed him out of the room. On the ninth visit, just as he was about to be dismissed in the same summary fas.h.i.+on, Curran, with a flash of his dark eye, fixed the surgeon, and said--”Mr. Abernethy, I have been here on eight different days, and I have paid you eight different guineas; but you have never yet listened to the symptoms of my complaint. I am resolved, sir, not to leave the room till you satisfy me by doing so.” With a good-natured laugh, Abernethy, half suspecting that he had to deal with a madman, fell back in his chair and said--”Oh! very well, sir; I am ready to hear you out. Go on, give me the whole--your birth, parentage, and education. I wait your pleasure. Pray be as minute and tedious as you can.” With perfect gravity Curran began--”Sir, my name is John Philpot Curran. My parents were poor, but I believe honest people, of the province of Munster, where also I was born, at Newmarket, in the county of Cork, in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty. My father being employed to collect the rents of a Protestant gentleman of small fortune, in that neighbourhood, procured my admission into one of the Protestant free-schools, where I obtained the first rudiments of my education. I was next enabled to enter Trinity College, Dublin, in the humble sphere of a sizar--” And so he went steadily on, till he had thrown his auditor into convulsions of laughter.
Abernethy was very careful not to take fees from patients if he suspected them to be in indigent circ.u.mstances. Mr. George Macilwain, in his instructive and agreeable ”Memoirs of John Abernethy,” mentions a case where an old officer of parsimonious habits, but not of impoverished condition, could not induce Abernethy to accept his fee, and consequently forbore from again consulting him. On another occasion, when a half-pay lieutenant wished to pay him for a long and laborious attendance, Abernethy replied, ”Wait till you're a general; then come and see me, and we'll talk about fees.” To a gentleman of small means who consulted him, after having in vain had recourse to other surgeons, he said--”Your recovery will be slow. If you don't feel much pain, depend upon it you are gradually getting round; if you do feel much pain, then come again, _but not else_. I don't want your money.” To a hospital student (of great promise and industry, but in narrow circ.u.mstances), who became his dresser, he returned the customary fee of sixty guineas, and requested him to expend them in the purchase of books and securing other means of improvement. To a poor widow lady (who consulted him about her child), he, on saying good-bye in a friendly letter, returned all the fees he had taken from her under the impression that she was in good circ.u.mstances, and added ?50 to the sum, begging her to expend it in giving her child a daily ride in the fresh air. He was often brusque and harsh, and more than once was properly reproved for his hastiness and want of consideration.
”I have heard of your rudeness before I came, sir,” one lady said, taking his prescription, ”but I was not prepared for such treatment.
What am I to do with this?”
”Anything you like,” the surgeon roughly answered. ”Put it on the fire if you please.”
Taking him at his word, the lady put her fee on the table, and the prescription on the fire; and making a bow, left the room. Abernethy followed her into the hall, apologizing, and begging her to take back the fee or let him write another prescription; but the lady would not yield her vantage-ground.
Of operations Abernethy had a most un-surgeon-like horror--”like Cheselden and Hunter, regarding them as the reproach of the profession.” ”I hope, sir, it will not be long,” said a poor woman, suffering under the knife. ”No, indeed,” earnestly answered Abernethy, ”that would be too horrible.” This humanity, on a point on which surgeons are popularly regarded as being devoid of feeling, is very general in the profession. William Cooper (Sir Astley's uncle) was, like Abernethy, a most tender-hearted man. He was about to amputate a man's leg, in the hospital theatre, when the poor fellow, terrified at the display of instruments and apparatus, suddenly jumped off the table, and hobbled away. The students burst out laughing; and the surgeon, much pleased at being excused from the performance of a painful duty, exclaimed, ”By G.o.d, I am glad he's gone!”
The treatment which one poor fellow received from Abernethy may at first sight seem to militate against our high estimate of the surgeon's humanity, and dislike of inflicting physical pain. Dr. ----, an eminent physician still living and conferring l.u.s.tre on his profession, sent a favourite man-servant with a brief note, running--”Dear Abernethy, Will you do me the kindness to put a seton in this poor fellow's neck? Yours sincerely, ----.” The man, who was accustomed and encouraged to indulge in considerable freedom of speech with his master's friends, not only delivered the note to Abernethy, but added, in an explanatory and confiding tone, ”You see, sir, I don't get better, and as master thinks I ought to have a seton in my neck, I should be thankful if you'd put it in for me.” It is not at all improbable that Abernethy resented the directions of master and man. Anyhow he inquired into the invalid's case, and then taking out his needles did as he was requested. The operation was attended with a little pain, and the man howled, as only a coward can howl, under the temporary inconvenience. ”Oh! Lor' bless you! Oh, have mercy on me!
Yarra--yarra--yarr! Oh, doctor--doctor--you'll kill me!” In another minute the surgeon's work was accomplished, and the acute pain having pa.s.sed away, the man recovered his self-possession and impudence.
”Oh, well, sir, I do hope, now that it's done, it'll do me good. I do hope that.”
”But it won't do you a bit of good.”
”What, sir, no good?” cried the fellow.
”No more good,” replied Abernethy, ”than if I had spat upon it.”
”Then, sir--why--oh, yarr! here's the pain again--why did you do it?”
”Confound you, man!” answered the surgeon testily. ”Why did I do it?--why, _didn't you ask me to put a seton in your neck_?”
Of course the surgical treatment employed by Abernethy in this case was the right one; but he was so nettled with the fellow's impudence and unmanly lamentations, that he could not forbear playing off upon him a barbarous jest.
If for this outbreak of vindictive humour the reader is inclined to call Abernethy a savage, let his gift of ?50 to the widow lady, to pay for her sick child's carriage exercise, be remembered. _Apropos_ of ?50, Dr. Wilson of Bath sent a present of that sum to an indigent clergyman, against whom he had come in the course of practice. The gentleman who had engaged to convey the gift to the unfortunate priest said, ”Well, then, I'll take the money to him to-morrow.” ”Oh, my dear sir,” said the doctor, ”take it to him to-night. Only think of the importance to a sick man of one good night's rest!”
Side by side with stories of the benevolence of ”the Faculty,” piquant anecdotes of their stinginess might be told. This writer knew formerly a grab-all-you-can-get surgeon, who was entertaining a few professional brethren at a Sunday morning's breakfast, when a patient was ushered into the ante-room of the surgeon's bachelor chambers, and the surgeon himself was called away to the visitor. Unfortunately he left the folding-doors between the breakfast-room and the ante-room ajar, and his friends sitting in the former apartment overheard the following conversation:
”Well, my friend, what's the matter?”--the surgeon's voice.
The visitor's voice--”Plaze, yer honner, I'm a pore Hirish labourer, but I can spill a bit, and I read o' yer honner's moighty foine cure in the midical jarnal--the _Lancet_. And I've walked up twilve miles to have yer honner cure me. My complaint is ----”
Surgeon's voice, contemptuously--”Oh, my good man, you've made a mistake. You'd better go to the druggist's shop nearest your home, and he'll do for you all you want. You couldn't pay me as I require to be paid.”
Visitor's voice, proudly and triumphantly--”Och, an' little ye know an Irish gintleman, dochter, if ye think he'd be beholden to the best of you for a feavor. Here's a bit o' gould--nocht liss nor a tin s.h.i.+llin'
piece, but I've saved it up for ye, and ye'll heve the whole, tho' its every blissed farthing I hev.”
The surgeon's voice altered. The case was gone into. The prescription was written. The poor Irish drudge rose to go, when the surgeon, with that delicate quant.i.ty of conscience that rogues always have to make themselves comfortable upon, said, ”Now, you say you have no more money, my friend. Well, the druggist will charge you eighteenpence for the medicine I have ordered there. So there's eighteenpence for you out of your half-sovereign.”
We may add that this surgeon was then, at a moderate computation, making three thousand a year. We have heard of an Old Bailey barrister boasting how he wrung the s.h.i.+llings (to convert the sovereigns already paid with his brief into guineas) from the grimed hands of a prisoner actually standing in the dock for trial, ere he would engage to defend him. But compared with this surgeon the man of the long robe was a disinterested friend of the oppressed.