"One says, 'I'm not of any school;
No living master gives me rule;
Nor do I in the old tracks tread;
I scorn to learn aught from the dead.'
Which means, if I am not mistook,
'I am an ass on my own hook.'"
A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.--A BARBER "GONE TO POT."--FOOLS MADE
DOCTORS.--BAKERS.--BARBERS.--"A LUCKY DOG."--TINKERS.--ROYAL
FAVORS.--"LITTLE CARVER DAVY."--A BUTCHER'S BLOCKHEAD.--A SWEEPING
VISIT.--HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.--PEDAGOGUES TURN
DOCTORS.--ARBUTHNOT.--"A QUAKER."--"WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR."--WEAVERS
AND BASKET-MAKERS.--A TOUGH PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M. D.'S TO KILL
HIM.--MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.--A MERRY PARSON.--BLACK MAIL.--POLICE AS A
MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC.
"Every man is either a physician or a fool at forty," says the old
proverb.
"May not a man be both?" suggested Canning, in the presence of a circle of
friends, before whom Sir Henry Halford happened to quote the old saying.
"There is generally a fool in every family, whom the parents select at
once for a priest or a physician," said Peter Pindar. He was good
authority.
I am of the opinion that there are many whose mental capacity has been
overrated, who have made doctors of themselves; but we are not to treat of
fools in this chapter, but of men whom _circumstances_ have created
physicians, and of men who, in spite of circumstances of birth or
education, have made themselves doctors.
In the choice of a trade or profession, every young man should weigh
carefully his natural capacity to the pursuit selected. His parents or
guardians should consult the youth's adaptability rather than their own
convenience. How many have dragged out a miserable existence by ill choice
of a calling! Men who were destined by nature to be wood-sawyers and
diggers of trenches, are found daily taking upon themselves the immense
responsibility of teaching those whose mental calibre is far above their
own, or assuming the greater responsibility of administering to the
afflicted.
If a man finds himself adapted to a higher calling than that originally
selected for him by his friends, by all means let him "come up higher;"
but too many by far have changed from a trade to a profession to which
they had no adaptability.
So we find men in the medical profession who were better as they
were,--bakers, barbers, butchers, tailors, tinkers, pedagogues, cobblers,
horse doctors, etc., etc.
There used to be a fish-peddler going about Boston, blowing a fish-horn,
and crying his "fresh cod an' haddock," who, getting tired of that loud
crying and loud smelling occupation, took to blowing his horn for his
"wonderful discovery" of a "pasture weed," which cured every humor but a
thundering humor (one can see the humor of the joke), and every eruption
since the eruption of Hecla in 1783,--which is a pity that he had not made
his discovery in time to have tried it on old Hecla's back when it was up.