The Funny Side of Physic Part 49

"O, sir, dear doctor, it can never be;" and she fell back on her pillow, weeping and wringing her hands in awful anguish.

"Come, it shall be done;" and I firmly held to the point.

She arose. I gave her a bowl and napkin that were near; she bathed her inflamed and swollen eyes, then, with surprising calmness and fort.i.tude, took a pencil and a bit of paper from the light-stand at her bedside, and wrote a name.

She then handed it to me, saying "'Tis he." I read the name. I jumped to my feet. I forgot my tender patient. I forgot all but my own sufferings, and those of my dear little wife and darling babe, and their enemy, as I cried out,--

"O, my G.o.d in Israel! I have got him! I shall be avenged!"

"O, don't, doctor! What is the matter?" exclaimed the affrighted girl, rising in bed. I had rushed, almost frantically across the room and back.

"Forgive me," I said, "I--I forgot myself. Pardon me."

"O, sir, I thought you were mad."

"I was, dear girl. It is past. Now to your case." And I proceeded to unfold to her unsophisticated mind the true state of affairs. Here was a pure, respectable, though poor young girl, under age, who had been betrayed, locked into an office, and seduced by a son of the squire, and deserted, threatened--left to bear the burden and disgrace alone. She dared not divulge the name of her destroyer, because of the position of his family in the community. I dared. But to bring her mind up above her fears, to compel the young man to make rest.i.tution, as far as lay in his power, was a severe task. It was my duty to do this; sweeter then than duty, it was my revenge! By implicating the real villain, I released several other young men from suspicion, particularly one young man with red hair.

The girl was taken away from the sight of dear sister's sinister looks, and the influence and threats of the seducer, and secret offers of bribery of the deacon, his father.

The law took its course. No eye could see the hand that worked the machinery. The time was counted almost to a day, as the result proved. The young man was arrested, and gave bonds. It became the theme of general conversation. I was interviewed. I was dumb--deaf--blind! Threats and bribes proved equally ineffectual to induce me to give an opinion, or a pledge not to appear in the coming trial at the next term of the Superior Court. To marry the poor, unfortunate girl was beneath the dignity of the seducer and family. They would pay their last farthing first, or the young man would sooner go to prison for the crime. His two sisters carried their heads higher than ever. The two sons threatened my life. But I kept on the even tenor of my way. The girl became a mother.

"Next Tuesday court sits," whispered everybody, and nothing in town was discussed but the probabilities of the pending lawsuit.

The lawsuit was nothing, the fine was nothing, which the justice might impose; even imprisonment was nothing in comparison to acknowledgment of an illegitimate child by the deacon's family, notwithstanding the child was not red-haired, but much resembled its reputed father, the deacon's son.

There was no trial. The squire paid a sum of money to the idiotic old father of the beautiful young mother, and agreed, orally, to support the child, and the suit was withdrawn. But this virtually acknowledged the child, and the girl returned to her father's roof for shelter, and a place wherein to weep alone over her so-called fatherless child, and hide her shame (?) from the uncharitable world.

The town became too cramped for the squire and his beautiful family. He sold out, but not before he had lost his rule there, and was hanged in effigy as being "too Secesh."

The seducer married a frail beauty, who mourns a drunken, brutish husband.

The other son became steady, and married a lovely girl--my first patient.

The daughters never wedded. Too proud to marry a poor man, too poor and dest.i.tute of real beauty or accomplishments for a wealthy or refined man to desire to wed them, they became servants and lackeys. If I desire a lunch at a certain saloon, one of them awaits my order. No matter about the other unfortunate, unloved girl. The father is an imbecile invalid.

G.o.d is my witness, my judge, I long ago buried my hard feelings against them; they have only my commiseration.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XV.

DOCTORS' FEES AND INCOMES.

"Three faces wears the doctor; when first sought, An angel's and a G.o.d's, the cure half wrought; But, when, the cure complete, he seeks his fee, The d----l looks then less terrible than he."

EURICUS CORDUS, 1530.

ANCIENT FEES.--LARGE FEES.--SPANISH PRIEST-DOCTORS.--A PIG ON PENANCE.--SMALL FEES.--A "CHOP" POSTPONED.--LONG FEES.--SHORT FEES.--OLD FEES.--A NIGHT-CAP.--AN OLD SHOE FOR LUCK.--A BLACK FEE.--"HEART'S OFFERING."--A STUFFED CAT.--THE "GREAT GUNS" OF NEW YORK.--BOSTON.--ROTTEN EGGS.--"CATCH WHAT YOU CAN."--FEMALE DOCTORS'

FEES.--ABOVE PRICE.--"ASK FOR A FEE."--"PITCH HIM OVERBOARD."--DELICATE FEES.--MAKING THE MOST OF THEM.

The great German physician who wrote the above died (as he ought, for putting so much truth into four lines) in 1538. He, of all physicians of his day, earned his fees; but it is often the case that the most deserving get the least reward, and Cordus was not an exception to the rule. A good physician, or surgeon, is seldom a sharp financier, and _vice versa_. "It is hard to serve two masters."

Ancient physicians' fees were much larger, considering the difference in the value of money, than modern.

ERASISTRATUS, in the year 330 B. C., received from General Seleucus, of Alexander's army, to whom the kingdom of Syria fell at the termination of the Macedonian conquest, the enormous sum of 60,000 crowns as a fee for his discovery of the disorder of the general's son, Antiochus. The Emperor Augustus employed four physicians, viz., Albutus, Arantius, Calpeta.n.u.s, and Rubrius, to each of whom he paid an annual salary of 250,000 sesterces, equal to $10,000. Martialis, the Spanish epigramist, who was born in 40 A. D. says Alconius received 10,000,000 sesterces ($400,000) for a few years' practice.

LARGE FEES.

French physicians were never very well paid. The surgeons of Charlemagne were tolerably well recompensed. Ambrose Pare, the great surgeon, and inventor of ligatures (for peculiar arteries),--previous to whose time the arteries were seared with a hot iron; otherwise the patient bled to death,--received 5,000 francs for ligaturing one artery. Louis XIV. gave his surgeons 75,000 crowns each for successfully performing upon him a surgical operation.

Upon the confinement of Maria Louise, second wife of the great Napoleon, four physicians--Bourdier, Corvisat, Dubois, and Ivan--received the sum of $20,000. Dubois was the princ.i.p.al, and received one half of the amount,--not a very extravagant remuneration; but then Napoleon held a mean opinion of physicians in general, and this fee was not to be wondered at. Dupuytren, the distinguished French surgeon, left a property of $1,580,000. Hahnemann, who, in 1785, at Dresden, abandoned physic in disgust, afterwards went to Paris, and at the time of his death was literally besieged with patients, reaping a reward for his labors of not less than $40,000 per annum. Boerhaave was a successful pract.i.tioner, born at Leyden, and left, at his death, $200,000 from private practice. John Stow, the eminent antiquarian writer, whose misfortunes compelled him to beg his daily bread at the age of eighty, informs us that "half a crown (English) was looked upon as a large fee in Holland, while in England, at that same time, a physician scorned to touch any fee but gold, and surgeons were still more exorbitant."

In Spain, until a very remote period, the priests continued to exercise the double office of priest and physician, and some of them were proficient in surgery; and though they fixed no stipulated price for their medical services, they usually managed to get two fleeces from the one shearing, and on certain occasions dispose of the carca.s.s also, for their own pecuniary advantages, as the following will show:--

Anthony Gavin, formerly a Catholic priest of Spain, says, "I saw Fran.

Alfaro, a Jew, in Lisbon, who told me that he was known to be very rich, when in Seville, where the priests finally stripped him of all his wealth, and cast him into the Inquisition, where they kept him four years, under some pretence, and finally liberated him, that he might acc.u.mulate more property. After three years' trade, having again collected considerable wealth, he was again imprisoned and his wealth confiscated by the priest-doctors, but let off, with the order to wear the mark of San Benito (picture of a man in the midst of the fire of h.e.l.l) for six months.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SAN BENITO PIG.]

"But Alfaro fled from the city, and finding a pig near the gate, he slipped the San Benito over the pig's neck, and, sending him into the town, made his escape. 'Now I am poor,' he added, 'n.o.body wants to imprison me.'"

ENGLISH FEES AND INCOMES.

In no other country have physicians' fees varied so much as in England.

The Protestant divine and the physician have kept step together to the music of civilization and enlightenment. Both of these professions were held at a low estimation up to the Elizabethan era, when a young, unfledged M. D. from Oxford would gladly accept a situation in a lord's family for five or ten pounds a year, with his board, and lodgings in the garret, while, in addition to professional services he might act as sort of wise clown, "and be a patient listener, the solver of riddles, and the b.u.t.t of ridicule for the family and guests. He might save the expense of a gardener--nail up the apricots; or a groom, and sometimes curry down and harness the horses; cast up the farrier's or butler's accounts, or carry a parcel or message across the country."

As was said also of the divine, "Not one living in fifty enabled the inc.u.mbent to bring up a family comfortably. As the children multiplied, the household became more beggarly. Often it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine and by loading dung-carts, that he could gain his daily bread.... His sons followed the plough, and his daughters went out to service."

Queen Elizabeth's physician in ordinary received one hundred pounds per annum and perquisites--"sustenance, wine, wax, and etceteras." Morgan, her apothecary, for one quarter's bill was paid 18 7_s._ 8_d._ A one pound fee, paid by the Earl of c.u.mberland to a Cambridge physician, was considered as exceptionally liberal, even for a n.o.bleman to pay.

Edward III. granted to his apothecary, who acted in the capacity of physician in those days, a salary amounting to six pence a day, and to Ricardus Wye, his surgeon, twelve pence per day, besides eight marks. (A mark was 13_s._ 4_d._) In the courts of the kings of Wales, the physicians and surgeons were the twelfth in rank, and whose fees were fixed by law. Dr. Caius was fortunate in holding position as physician to Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. Sir Theodore Mayerne was still more fortunate in having the honor of serving Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of France, and subsequently King James I., Charles I. and II. of England.

Mayerne has been the subject of many anecdotes, of which the following is a sample:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN OLD ENGLISH CLERGYMAN AND HIS FAMILY.]

A parsimonious friend, consulting Mayerne, laid two broad pieces of gold (sixty s.h.i.+llings) on the doctor's table, to express his generosity, as he felt safe that they would be immediately returned to him. But Mayerne quietly pocketed them, saying,--

"I made my will this morning, and if it became known that I had refused a fee, I might be deemed _non compos mentis_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE KING'S PHYSICIAN AND THE EXECUTIONER.]

In 1700, graduated physicians' dues were ten s.h.i.+llings, licensed doctors, six s.h.i.+llings eight pence. A surgeon's fee was twelve pence per mile, be his journey long or short, and five s.h.i.+llings for setting a bone or dislocated joint, one s.h.i.+lling for bleeding, and five pounds for an amputation. All after attendance extra.

ANECDOTE OF JAMES COYTHIER.