"Will yeze be axin' that much?" asked a six and a half foot Irishman who
stood by the opposite side of the bed.
"Do you have to pay the bill, sir?" I demanded.
"Noo," he replied.
"Then mind your own business," I exclaimed, with a clincher, and a flash
of the eyes that somehow caused him to cower like the miserable drunken
coward he was, amid the laughs and jeers of the bystanders.
[Illustration: MY FRONT STREET PATIENT.]
"There, take the money," said the woman (boarding mistress). "Dr. B. would
come ferninst the railroad over for half of it, he would," she added.
"Woman," said I, "when next any of your kind want a doctor, do you go
ferninst the railroad for Dr. B." (I knew she lied), "and get him for a
dollar. As for me, _I never, for love or money, will come to your call
again_."
I never heard of money enough to induce me to visit Front or Charles
Street after that night, and I have seen some anxious faces looking about
for a doctor, in case of emergency, in that locality.
"SAVING AT THE SPIGOT, AND WASTING AT THE BUNG."
Again, there is a class in every city who, to avoid a physician's fee, go
to an apothecary, briefly and imperfectly state their case, perhaps to a
green clerk, or a proprietor who is as ignorant of the pathology of the
disease as the miserable applicant; and who ever knew of a druggist too
ignorant to prescribe for a case over the counter? The result is often the
administration of harsh remedies, which aggravate the present, or produce
some other disease worse than the original, and in the end the patient is
obliged to seek the advice of a physician.
Now the patient is ashamed to tell the whole truth, the doctor has yet to
learn what drugs are rankling in the system, and the disease is often
protracted thereby ten times as long as it need have been, had the man at
the outset sought the advice of a respectable physician. This is an
every-day occurrence. I knew a young man who recently went into
consumption from having a comparatively simple case prolonged by this
apotheco-medical interference.