Dr. Lindsay's offices were ingeniously arranged on three sides of the
Athenian Building. The patient entering from the hall, just beside the
elevators, passed by a long, narrow corridor to the waiting room, and
thence to one of the tiny offices of the attending physicians; or, if he
were fortunate enough, he was led at once to the private office of the
great Lindsay, at the end of the inner corridor. By a transverse passage he
was then shunted off to a door that opened into the public hall just
opposite the elevator well. The incoming patient was received by a woman
clerk, who took his name, and was dismissed by another woman clerk, who
collected fees and made appointments. If he came by special appointment,
several stages in his progress were omitted, and he passed at once to one
of the smaller offices, where he waited until the machine was ready to
proceed with his case. Thus in the office there was a perpetual stream of
the sick and suffering, in, around, out, crossed by the coming and going
through transverse passages of the "staff," the attendants, the clerks,
messengers, etc. Each atom in the stream was welling over with egotistic
woes, far too many for the brief moment in which he would be closeted with
the great one, who held the invisible keys of relief, who penetrated this
mystery of human maladjustment. It was a busy, toiling, active, subdued
place, where the tinkle of the telephone bell, the hum of electric
annunciators, as one member of the staff signalled to another, vibrated in
the tense atmosphere. Into this hive poured the suffering, mounting from
the street, load after load, in the swiftly flying cages; their visit made,
their joss-sticks burned, they dropped down once more to the chill world
below, where they must carry on the burden of living.
The attending physicians arrived at nine. The "shop," as they called it,
opened at ten; Lindsay was due at eleven and departed at three. Thereafter
the hive gradually emptied, and by four the stenographers and clerks were
left alone to attend to purely business matters. Sommers came late the day
after his return from New York. The general door being opened to admit a
patient, he walked in and handed his coat and hat to the boy in buttons at
the door. The patient who had entered with him was being questioned by the
neat young woman whose business it was to stand guard at the outer door.
"What is your name, please?"
Her tones were finely adjusted to the caste of the patient. Judging from
the icy sharpness on this occasion, the patient was not high in the scale.
"Caroline Ducharme," the woman replied.
"Write it out, please."
The patient did so with some difficulty, scrawling half over the neat pad
the clerk pushed toward her.
"You wish to consult Dr. Lindsay?"
"The big doctor,--yes, mum."
"Did he make an appointment with you?"
"What's that?"
"Have you been here before?"
"No, mum."
"You will have to pay the fee in advance."
"What's that, please?"
"Ten dollars."
"Ten?"
The clerk tapped irritably on her desk with her pencil.
"Yes, _ten_ dollars for the first visit; five after that; operations
from fifty to five hundred."
The woman clutched tightly a small reticule. "I hain't the money!" she
exclaimed at last. "I thought it would be two dollars."
"You'll have to go to the hospital, then."
The clerk turned to a pile of letters.
"Don't he see nobody here without he pays ten?" the woman asked.
"No."
"Where is the hospital?"
"St. Isidore's--the clinic is every other Saturday at nine."
"But my head hurts awful bad. The doctor up our way don't know anything
about it."
The clerk no longer answered; she had turned half around in her
swivel-chair. Sommers leaned over her desk, and said,--
"Show her into my room, No. 3, Miss Clark."
"Dr. Lindsay is _very_ particular," the clerk protested.
"I will be responsible," Sommers answered sharply, in the tone he had
learned to use with hospital clerks when they opposed his will. He turned
to get his mail. The clerk shrugged her shoulders with a motion that said,
'Take her there yourself.' Sommers beckoned to the woman to follow him. He
took her to one of the little compartments on the inner corridor, which was
lined with strange devices: electrical machines, compressed air valves,
steam sprays--all the enginery of the latest invention.
"Now what is it?" he asked gruffly. He was vexed that the matter should
occur at this time, when he was on rather cool terms with Lindsay. The case
proved to be an interesting one, however. There were nervous complications;
it could not be diagnosed at a glance. After spending half an hour in
making a careful examination, he gave the woman a preliminary treatment,
and dismissed her with directions to call the next day.
"You will lose your eyesight, if you don't take care," he said. "We'll see
to-morrow."
"No," the woman shook her head. "I've had enough of her lip. You'se all
right; but I guess I'll have to go blind. I can't stand your prices. Here's
two dollars, all I got."
She held out a dirty bill.
"In the world?" Sommers added smilingly. It was a familiar formula.
"Just about," she admitted defiantly. "And if my eyes go back on me, I
guess 'twill be St. Isidore, or St. Somebody. You see I need my eyes pretty
bad just now for one thing."
"What's that?" the doctor asked good-naturedly, waving the money aside.
"To look for _him_. He's in Chicago somewheres, I know."
"Ducharme?" the doctor inquired carelessly.
The woman nodded, her not uncomely broad face assuming a strange expression
of determined fierceness. At that moment an assistant rapped at the door
with a summons from Dr. Lindsay.
"Turn up this evening, then, at the address on this card," Sommers said to
Mrs. Ducharme, handing her his card.
He would have preferred hearing that story about Ducharme to charging old
P. F. Wort with electricity. He went through the treatment with his
accustomed deftness, however. As he was leaving the room, Dr. Lindsay asked
him to wait.
"Mr. Porter is about to go abroad, to try the baths at Marienbad. I have
advised him to take one of our doctors with him to look after his diet and
comfort in travelling,--one that can continue our treatment and be
companionable. It will just take the dull season. I'd like to run over
myself, but my affairs--"
Lindsay completed the idea by sweeping his broad, fleshy hand over the
large office desk, which was loaded with letters, reports, and documents of
various kinds.
"What d'ye say, Sommers?"
"Do you think Porter would want me?" Sommers asked idly. He had seen in the
paper that morning that Porter was out of town, and was going to Europe for
his health. Porter had been out of town, persistently, ever since the
Pullman strike had grown ugly. The duties of the directors were performed,
to all intents and purposes, by an under-official, a third vice-president.
Those duties at present consisted chiefly in saying from day to day: "The
company has nothing to arbitrate. There is a strike; the men have a right
to strike. The company doesn't interfere with the men," etc. The third
vice-president could make these announcements as judiciously as the great
Porter.
"I have an idea," continued Sommers, "that Porter might not want me; he has
never been over-cordial."
"Nonsense!" replied the busy doctor. "Porter will take any one I advise him
to. All expenses and a thousand dollars--very good pay."
"Is Porter very ill?" Sommers asked. "I thought he was in fair health, the
last time I saw him."
Lindsay looked at the young doctor with a sharp, experienced glance. There
was a half smile on his face as he answered soberly:
"Porter has been living rather hard. He needs a rest--fatty degeneration
may set in."
"Brought on by the strike?"
Lindsay smiled broadly this time.
"Coincident with the strike, let us say."
"I don't believe I can leave Chicago just now," the young doctor replied
finally.
Lindsay stared at him as if he were demented.
"I've a case or two I am interested in," Sommers explained nonchalantly.
"Nothing much, but I don't care to leave. Besides, I don't think Porter
would be an agreeable companion."
"Very well," Lindsay replied indifferently. "French will go--a jolly,
companionable, chatty fellow."
The young doctor felt that Lindsay was enumerating pointedly the qualities
he lacked.
"Porter's connection will be worth thousands to the man he takes to. He's
in a dozen different corporations where they pay good salaries to
physicians. Of course, if you've started a practice already--"
"I don't suppose my cases are good for ten dollars."
Lindsay's handsome, gray-whiskered face expressed a polite disgust.
"There's another matter I'd like to speak about--"
"The patient Ducharme?" Sommers asked quickly.
"I don't know her name,--the woman Miss Clark says you admitted against my
rules. You know there are the free dispensaries for those who can't pay,
and, indeed, I give my own services. I cannot afford to maintain this plant
without fees. In short, I am surprised at such a breach of professional
etiquette."
Sommers got up from his seat nervously and then sat down again. Lindsay
undoubtedly had the right to do exactly what he pleased on his own
premises.
"Very well," he replied shortly. "It shan't occur again. I have told the
Ducharme woman to call at my rooms for treatment, and I will give Miss
Clark her ten dollars. She was an exceptionally interesting and instructive
case."
Lindsay elevated his eyebrows politely.
"Yes, yes, but you know we specialists are so liable to be imposed upon.
Every one tries to escape his fee; no one would employ Carson, for example,
unless he had the means to pay his fee, would he?"
"The cases are not exactly parallel."
"All cases of employment are parallel," Lindsay replied with emphasis.
"Every man is entitled to what he can get, from the roustabout on the wharf
to our friend Porter, and no more."
"I have often thought," Sommers protested rather vaguely, "that clergymen
and doctors should be employed by the state to do what they can; it isn't
much!"
"There are the hospitals." Lindsay got up from his chair at the sound of an
electric bell. "And our very best professional men practise there, give
their time and money and strength. You will have to excuse me, as Mr.
Carson has an appointment, and I have already kept him waiting. Will you
see Mrs. Winter and young Long at eleven thirty and eleven forty-five?"
As Sommers was leaving, Lindsay called out over his shoulder, "And can you
take the clinic, Saturday? I must go to St. Louis in consultation. General
R. P. Atkinson, president of the Omaha and Gulf, an old friend--"
"Shall be delighted," the young doctor replied with a smile.
As he stepped into the corridor, one of the young women clerks was filling
in an appointment slip on the long roll that hung on a metal cylinder. This
was an improved device, something like a cash-register machine, that
printed off the name opposite a certain hour that was permanently printed
on the slip. The hours of the office day were divided into five-minute
periods, but, as two assisting physicians were constantly in attendance
beside Sommers, the allotted time for each patient was about fifteen
minutes.
"Mrs. Winter is in No. 3," the clerk told him. "Long in No. 1, and Mr.
Harrison and a Miss Frost in the reception room."
So the machine ground on. Even the prescriptions were formularized to such
an extent that most of them were stencilled and went by numbers. The clerk
at the end of the corridor handed the patient a little card, on which was
printed No. 3033, No. 3127, etc., as he circled by in the last turn of the
office. There was an apothecary store on the floor below, where the patient
could sit in an easy-chair and read the papers while the prescription
called for by his number was being fetched by an elegant young woman.
Sommers hurried through with Mrs. Winter, who was a fussy, nervous little
woman from the West Side; she resented having "a young feller" thrust on
her.
"I knew Dr. Lindsay when he was filling prescriptions on Madison Street,"
she said spitefully.
Sommers smiled. "That must have been a good while ago, before Chicago was a
big place."
"Before you was born, young man; before all the doctors who could came down
here in a bunch and set up offices and asked fees enough of a body to keep
'em going for a year!"
Then young Long; then one, two, three new patients, who had to have
physical examinations before being admitted to Lindsay. Once or twice
Lindsay sent for Sommers to assist him in a delicate matter, and Sommers
hurried off, leaving his half-dressed patient to cool his heels before a
radiator. After the examinations there was an odd patient or two that
Lindsay had left when he had gone out to lunch with some gentlemen at the
Metropolitan Club. By two o'clock Sommers got away to take a hasty luncheon
in a bakery, after which he returned to a new string of cases.
To-day "the rush," as the clerks called it, was greater than usual. The
attendants were nervous and irritable, answered sharply and saucily, until
Sommers felt that the place was intolerable. All this office practice got
on his nerves. It was too "intensive." He could not keep his head and enter
thoroughly into the complications of a dozen cases, when they were shoved
at him pell-mell. He realized that he was falling into a routine, was
giving conventional directions, relying upon the printed prescriptions and
mechanical devices. All these devices were ingenious,--they would do no
harm,--and they might do good, ought to do good,--if the cursed human
system would only come up to the standard.
At last he seized his coat and hat, and escaped. The noiseless cage dropped
down, down, past numerous suites of doctors' offices similar to Lindsay's,
with their ground-glass windows emblazoned by dozens of names. This
building was a kind of modern Chicago Lourdes. All but two or three of the
suites were rented to some form of the medical fraternity. Down, down: here
a druggist's clerk hailing the descending car; there an upward car stopping
to deliver its load of human freight bound for the rooms of another great
specialist,--Thornton, the skin doctor. At last he reached the ground floor
and the gusty street. Across the way stood a line of carriages waiting for
women who were shopping at the huge dry-goods emporium, and through the
barbaric displays of the great windows Sommers could see the clerks moving
hither and thither behind the counters. It did not differ materially from
his emporium: it was less select, larger, but not more profitable,
considering the amount of capital employed, than his shop. Marshall Field
decked out the body; Lindsay, Thornton, and Co. repaired the body as best
they could. It was all one trade.
On State Street the sandwich men were sauntering dejectedly through the
crowd of shoppers: "_Professor Herman Sorter, Chiropodist._" "_Go to
Manassas for Spectacles_";--it was the same thing. Across the street, on
the less reputable western side, flared the celluloid signs of the quacks:
"_The parlors of famous old Dr. Green_." "_The original and only Dr.
Potter. Visit Dr. Potter. No cure, no charge. Examination free._" The
same business! Lindsay would advertise as "old Dr. Lindsay," if it paid to
advertise,--paid socially and commercially. Dr. Lindsay's offices probably
"took in" more in a month than "old Dr. Green" made in a year, without the
expense of advertising. Lindsay would lose much more by adopting the
methods of quackery than he could ever make: he would lose hospital
connections, standing in the professional journals, and social prestige.
Lindsay was quite shrewd in sticking to the conventions of the profession.