THE DOCTOR. TO 



the Doctor is beheld ? To the little child there is something fear- 

 ful, ghost-like, in the sound of Doctor. It is not a mere antipathy 

 to the jam powder j there is a hobgoblinish sound in the word Doc- 

 tor which makes him ever after an object of alarm and dread. We 

 do not mean to include in this title all those ycleped Doctors, from 

 the pig-killer to the apothecary, — 



" Who in the catalogue go for Doctors, 

 As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, 

 Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are 'cleped 

 All by the name of dogs ;" — 



but those solemn students and grave masters — the lineal descendants 

 of the ancient "leech" — who hold no intercommunion with the 

 world at large but through the " art and mystery" of their calling. 



Hark ! — the Doctor ! What terror there is in every look, what 

 flying to and fro to escape the glance of the evil eye as he walks up 

 the stairs ; one, two, three, four, — ^for a true-bred Doctor would 

 sooner swallow his fee than mount two steps at once — five, six : the 

 door opens, and the pale, emaciated, trembling brother, or shrinking 

 sister, droops before the bald-headed Mephistophiles, whose very 

 shake of the hand seems supernatural and belonging to another 

 world. Then the poor patient, her eye restless, her cheek flushed, 

 her breathings short, the very pulse quickened, as he softly intrudes 

 his wan features between the falling white curtains of the bed — the 

 " Row do you do ? how do you do ?" in tones pianissimo, sliding 

 down into a mere breathing aspiration — then the solemn touch of 

 his cold, white, long-fingered hand, the loud tick, tick, tick, of his 

 watch, with the dead, solemn moment of pulse feeling — the ah ! as 

 if talking to his own ghost. The Doctor is a fearful man ! 



Different from every other created being, every thing conspires to 

 transform him into a nature neither of life nor death. The Doc- 

 tor's education works well ; the constant features of death, the 

 ceaseless wail of pain and anguish, the affliction of weeping friends 

 — all this works well ; but, more than all, the first fears of infancy 

 and childhood, and the superstitious dread which trafficking with 

 death creates, work all to throw around the Doctor an aspect pecu- 

 liar and impressive. But this dread is one of those " impressions" 

 which may be said with us to have had no first, but arose with the 

 existence of human suffering, even long anterior to Machaon or Es- 

 culapius ; medicine and magic came from the same womb, and thus 



