EXPERIENCES OF A SURGEON. 573 



in early, and attended till the termination of the case ; but now I 

 pay one or two visits, and am dismissed with the remark, either that 

 the case is hopeless, or that Mr. So-and-so, they think, can manage 

 very well sad times ! sad times ! " Yet the man was pocketing 

 from five to six thousand pounds a year. He was a terrible coddler; 

 and 1 have known him spend half an hour in discussing the relative 

 merits of rusks and tops-and-bottoms : these last formed a great 

 part of his own diet ; and, proceeding upon the principle of ' what 

 is good for the goose, is good for the gander,' he never failed to laud 

 their virtues in every case to which he was called. He was a noted 

 adept in the composition of puddings, panado, and gruel, and would 

 descant eloquently and learnedly on ass and cow milk, and give 

 minute directions as to whether it should be boiled or plain ; and, if 

 boiled, whether with bread, flower, meal, or rice. He was a most 

 patient scrutiniser into the contents of spittoons and other utensils; 

 and would examine a tongue or an ulcerated throat for half an hour 

 at a time : he felt the pulse at both wrists, and, in the end, would 

 sit and tell his patient an amusing anecdote to crown his inquiries. 

 He was thus an especial favourite of old ladies ; whether male or 

 female, an excellent gossip, and chronicler of past times. 



He was, I believe, generally liked by the profession, though oc- 

 casionally guilty of meannesses arising from his grasping disposition : 

 to these most of the practitioners were obliged to submit without 

 murmuring, as the Doctor was too decidedly and habitually popular 

 to be sneered at. 



Such was Doctor E at the age of seventy ; and, such as he 



was, he was physician in ordinary to the town. Being what is 

 termed a safe man, he was always preferred by the younger surgeons ; 

 and, by this means, his popularity was kept alive from generation to 

 generation. As to his medical abilities, they were respectable: he 

 had no pretensions to extraordinary skill : his views and recipes were 

 common-place and unvarying ; and he had a great contempt for the 

 new-fangled remedies that were just becoming fashionable, though 

 compelled now and then to prescribe them, in obedience to the fancy 

 of the day. He prognosticated that they would soon sink into de- 

 served oblivion; and that people would return to bark, opium, and 

 burnt sponge, in place of quinine, morphine, and iodine. He was 

 a stickler for long prescriptions, and seemed to think that in a mul- 

 titude of remedies some one surely would hit the disease. I have no 

 doubt he would gladly have returned to the days of the Mithridate and 

 Theriaca, when it was customary to compound a mixture of fifty or 

 sixty ingredients. After all, however, the Doctor was a worthy 

 man, as Nicol Jarvie said of Rob Roy, ' after a sort.' There were, 

 doubtless, cleverer and more disinterested men to be found ; but he 

 occupied a place in society which his demise has left vacant, and 

 which can never be filled up. 



I visited with him in consultation a lady labouring under ascites : 

 no expectations were entertained of her recovery ; but that was of 

 course no argument against doing something: for her. I had not seen 

 her before, and the case had to me therefore the merit of novelty, 

 and I hoped the Doctor would throw some light on its pathology, 



M.M. No. 6. 4 E 



