Believing, as I do, that every reader of these pages is personally
cognizant of the fact of the true benevolence of our present American
physicians, and because of the silence of the few biographers respecting
the generosities and benevolent deeds of those "who have gone before," I
have devoted more space to anecdotes of English surgeons and physicians
than I otherwise would. I have searched throughout four volumes of
biographies of American physicians without being able to find a single
anecdote of generosity recorded therein worthy of notice. Also in the
"Lives of Surgeons ----" I have to regret this almost unpardonable
neglect. I am assured from my personal knowledge of some of these latter
that there are a thousand instances, which, in justice to their
benevolence, ought to be put upon record, as they are engraven upon the
hearts of their suffering fellow-creatures, and not for the aggrandizement
of the generous bestower so much as an example for the cynical and the
uncharitable world.
A physician has just left my presence who has given away more than he has
ever received from his practice. The good physician is always generous. A
mean-souled man cannot become a successful practitioner. His success with
his patients depends as much, or more, upon the kindly influences that
beam from his eye, that flow from his soul, as upon the medicine that he
deals out from his "saddle-bags."
Generosity and kindness are innate to the man. They require little
cultivation.
The following amusing anecdote from "Every Saturday," I have reason to
believe, has reference to one of our best physicians, who is also a man of
letters, and illustrates my assertion:--
"INNATE GENEROSITY."
"One hot August afternoon a gentleman, whose name attached to a check
would be more valuable to the reader than if written here, was standing in
front of the Revere House, waiting for a Washington Street car. He was a
slim, venerable gentleman, with long white hair, and a certain dignity
about him which we suppose comes of always having a handsome balance in
the bank, for we never knew a poor man to have this particular air. It was
a sultry afternoon, and the millionaire, standing on the curb-stone in the
shade, had removed his hat, and was cooling his forehead with his
handkerchief, like any common person, when the Cambridge horse-car stopped
at the crossing at his feet. From this car hastily descended a well-known
man of letters, whose pre-occupied expression showed at once that he was
wrestling with an insubordinate hexameter, or laying out the points of a
new lecture. Suddenly he found himself face to face with a white-haired
old man, dejectedly holding a hat in one hand. As quick as thought the
poet--to whom neither old age nor young appeals in vain--thrust his hand
into his vest pocket, and, dropping a handful of nickel and fractional
currency into the extended hat, passed on. The millionaire gazed aghast
into the hat for an instant, and then inverted it spasmodically, allowing
the money to drop into the gutter, much to the amusement of a gentleman
and a tooth-pick on the steps of the Revere House, and very much more to
the amusement of another party, who chanced to know that the supposed
mendicant and the man of letters had been on terms of personal intimacy
these twenty years."