CHAP, iv CAUSES OF FOTHERGILL'S SUCCESS 31 



confusion or disquiet. Then he was gifted with a keen 

 intellect and rapid insight. He soon made up his mind, 

 and, it may be added, he was not apt to change it. This 

 tenacity of opinion, which may have been sometimes ill- 

 advised, is explained by his friend Dr. Percival, who says 

 that Fothergill had come to rely on an intuitive dis- 

 crimination of diseases, the result of long experience, 

 and that an authoritative expression of his opinion was a 

 necessity of his busy work. 1 So quick indeed was he 

 sometimes as to incur the suspicion of trifling with his 

 patients, but the event showed the wisdom of his counsel. 

 With these qualities was combined a disposition of great 

 kindness, so as to overspread the peculiarity of his 

 address, due to early Quaker training, with a certain 

 engaging sweetness. Severe as his face was, it ever wore 

 a smile for the sick, a " hope-inspiring " smile, which 

 commanded confidence, and called forth new efforts 

 towards recovery. 



Although he had constantly to deal with the weak, 

 the wilful, and the wayward among his many clients, 

 yet his own attitude was so charitable and so wise that 

 he never despised their frailties. He resisted the tempta- 

 tions which beset physicians. The sacred art of healing 

 was to him no mere source of lucre. " My only wish," 

 he said, " was to do what little business might fall to 

 my share as well as possible, and to banish all thoughts 

 of practising physic as a money-getting trade with the 

 same solicitude as I would the suggestions of vice or 

 intemperance." 2 He did not pander to his patients, 

 nor amuse them with dishonest nostrums, far less prey 

 upon the nervous or the confiding. Nor did he want 

 for his reward. " I have not served," he wrote, " an 

 ungenerous or ungrateful public." "To me the world 



1 Pettigrew, Memoirs of J. C. Lettsom, with his Correspondence, iii. 394. 



2 Letter to Lettsom, 1769. He was thankful, so he wrote, to the 

 gracious Preserver, " that kept my mind more attentive to the discharge of 

 my present anxious care for those I visited, than either to the profits or the 

 credit resulting from it." To be kept in such a temper, he added, working 

 with diligence, humility and as in the sight of the God of healing, frees the 

 mind from unavailing distress and disappointment. To the same, 1773. 

 Works, iii. p. xxv. 



