572 EXPERIENCES OF A SURGEON. 



" Jem and me brought a subject in ; and as I was drunk, why, I crept 

 in there to have a snooze, and I suppose the d d rats in worrying 

 me, made me groan, else I should have slept as quiet as a mouse." 



And so it turned out: both the men had come in intoxicated, and 

 Jack, more overcome than his fellow, had refused to budge a step, 

 and had deposited himself under the stairs, where he had slept 

 soundly, till the rats, taking advantage of his profound insensibility, 

 had nibbled away at his face, and so disturbed him. 



No. V. A PHYSICIAN AND A CONSULTATION. 



DR. E was at this time the fashionable physician in the town 



1 resided in. Few people could reconcile themselves to the idea of 

 dying, without first having his opinion on the subject ; and he might 

 have borne for his motto " Opiferque per urbem dicor," although 

 this saying would have been more applicable, had the first word been 

 of an opposite meaning. He was an old man of pursy figure and 

 short stature, with a rosy face and good-humoured eye. His dress 

 was black, and often seedy, though he neither took snuff nor wore 

 powder. In winter he might be seen descending from his carriage 

 clad in a ridiculously small plaid cloak, which had all the ap- 

 pearance of having served one or two of his sons when boys, as it 

 was desperately shabby, and only reached just to his knees. His 

 hat bore marks of service ; and a pair of his wife's old black kid 

 gloves, wofully out of repair, covered his digital extremities. The 

 Doctor was a saving man, and was now rich ; yet his industry was 

 unabated : he rose at six, began his visits at seven or eight o'clock, 

 to the grievous annoyance of the modern Machaons and servants ; 

 got home at twelve his hour for private patients ; generally con- 

 trived to make a round of evening visits ; and if he had a country 

 journey to undertake, he did it during the night, shrewdly remark- 

 ing that it saved daylight. He was a man of all work nothing 

 came amiss to him ; and no hour was wrong, provided he was dis- 

 engaged. 



Tims qualified, the Doctor bore the bell ; and, I verily be- 

 lieve, pocketed more fees than all the physicians in the town put 

 together. He had practised there for nearly half a century; and 

 as the town had enlarged rapidly, he had kept migrating from street 

 to street, as wealth and fashion changed their localities. He had 

 attended the mothers and fathers of half the respectable inhabitants ; 

 and his name had thus become identified with the place itself. Yet 

 the Doctor was a grumbler, notwithstanding. " Times," he said, 

 " were changed, sadly changed : formerly he should have received 

 twenty guineas, where he now received one." This, however, was 

 a figure of speech of the worthy man's, and not literally true : what 

 he meant was, that formerly, in the case where he received twenty 

 guineas for so many successive attendances, he now paid but one 

 visit, and so got but one guinea forgetting to state that where he had 

 hen one consultation, he had now fifty. " Yes," he would go on 

 grumbling- " twenty years ago, things were different : 1 was called 



