426 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



seen, with admiring despair, in Darwin's " Voyage of the Beagle." 

 Then many people, when they travel, are neither easy nor happy unless 

 they can afford the luxury of a " medical attendant." Some of the 

 best specimens of medical literature that we have are due to this in- 

 teresting class of medical men. A Milor on his travels likes a parson, 

 a doctor, and a traveller's major-domo ; but the doctor is least easily 

 dispensed with. In this way, by the medical education abroad, by 

 travelling engagements, and by taking appointments on board ship, 

 we have a travelled class of medical men who represent, perhaps, the 

 most interesting, and certainly the most amusing, section of the pro- 

 fession. Wherever in this wide world the medical man goes, he can 

 carry his work with him and his own letter of introduction. The wants 

 which surgery and medicine relieve speak their own vehement, univer- 

 sal language, and stand in need of no interpreter. The lawyer can do 

 no good with his law when once he is out of England. The clergyman 

 must learn the language of the natives, and find his opportunity and 

 his audience. But the medical man speaks the universal language, in- 

 asmuch as he answers a universal need. The philosopher and the par- 

 son can never be quite sure that they have done any good ; the good 

 is so remote and hidden, and it rarely happens that it is ascertained. 

 But the surgeon goes to a man in a state of positive torture, and by a 

 happy bit of carpentering puts him to rights, gives the intense happi- 

 ness of a sudden cessation from intense pain, and at once earns a 

 thrilling amount of very transitory gratitude. It would be only recit- 

 ing truisms to speak of the immense generous good they achieve. The 

 amount of self-denying generosity which a physician can practise, and 

 does, is simply incalculable, and there are, indeed, few of us who could 

 not easily furnish a collection of instances. 



The curiosities of medical life and practice are endless. If we hear 

 very often of medical men doing arduous work for very scanty remu- 

 neration, sometimes there is an agreeable obverse of receiving very 

 splendid remuneration for very scanty services. We know of a medi- 

 cal man whose duty it is to take lunch every day at a great castle be- 

 longing to a noble lord. The household is immense ; and there is just 

 the chance that there may be some case of indisposition demanding 

 attention. He gets some of the best company and best lunches in 

 England, and duly charges a guinea for each attendance. There is a 

 very wealthy man near a great city, who cannot bear to be left for the 

 night. There is a physician of great ability who drives out of town 

 nightly to sleep at his residence ; he is consequently debarred evening 

 society, and if he goes out to dinner he has to leave his friends before 

 wine. He has to charge his patient a thousand a year ; and, I think, 

 he works hard for his money. Sometimes the services are such that 

 money cannot repay them. A friend of mine, a young medicus, had a 

 standing engagement of four hundred a year to look after the health 

 of an old lady. She required to be inspected three times a day, and 



