One day, just as Dr. Abernethy was stepping into his carriage to make a
professional visit to the Duke of W., to whom he had been called in a
hurry, a gentleman stopped him to say that the ----, at Somers Town
(mentioning a poor gentleman whom he had visited without fee), would be
glad to have him visit him again at his leisure.
"Why, I cannot go now," Dr. Abernethy replied, "for I am going in haste to
see the Duke of W." Then, pausing a moment before stepping into his
carriage, he looked up to the coachman, and quietly said, "To Somers
Town."
The fidgety irritability of his first impression at interference, and the
beneficence of his second thought, were very characteristic of Dr.
Abernethy.
A pupil, who wished to consult him one day, took the very inauspicious
moment when the doctor (and professor) was looking over his papers, but a
few moments before lecture, in the museum.
"I am fearful, sir, that I have a polypus in my nose, and want you to look
at it," said the student.
The doctor made no reply; but when he had completed the sorting of his
preparations, he said, looking up,--
"Eh?"
To which the pupil repeated his request.
[Illustration: AFRAID OF A POLYPUS.]
"Then stand on your head; don't you see that all the light here comes from
the skylight? How am I to look into your nose?"
(This was true, for there were no side-lights in the amphitheatre.)
"Where do you live?" continued the doctor.
"Bartholomew Close, sir."
"At what time do you get up?"
"At eight."
"You can't be at Bedford Row" (where Abernethy resided) "at nine, then?"
"Yes, sir, I can."
"To-morrow morning, then."
"Yes, sir; thank you."
The pupil was punctual. Dr. Abernethy made a very careful examination of
his nose, found nothing of the nature of polypus, made the pupil promise
never to look into his nose again, and he, in after years, said, that
there never was anything the matter.
Dr. Abernethy never took a fee from a student, brother doctor, nor full
fee from a clergyman. His great labors seemed to be in the hospitals, and
on his resignation as surgeon to St. Bartholomew, he presented for its use
five hundred dollars. He never neglected his poor hospital patients for
the richer ones outside.
One morning, on leaving his house for a visit to the hospital patients,
some one wished to detain him, when he exclaimed, in terms more earnest
than elegant,--
"Private patients may go to the devil" (or elsewhere, another reports),
"but the poor fellows in the hospital I am bound to care for."
To poor students whose funds were "doubtful," he presented free tickets to
his college lectures, afterwards showing them marked attention.
Everybody has heard of his rude kindness to a young fashionable miss, whom
her mother took to Abernethy for treatment. It is said that the doctor ran
a knife under her belt, in presence of the mother, instantly severing it,
and exclaiming,--
"Why, madam, don't you know there are upwards of thirty yards of ----"
(what are more elegantly termed bowels) "squeezed under that girdle? Go
home, give nature fair play, and you'll have no need of a prescription."
[Illustration: ABERNETHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION.]