More Than One Hundred Thousand Dollars Divided Among Medical Men Who
Attended King Edward.
That old bugbear, the doctor’s bill, is really something worth while—to
the doctor—when the patient happens to be a king. Of all the things a
man has to pay, there is probably nothing he really grudges quite as
much as this.
Let the ordinary mortal take heart, however, after reading the fees
which royalty pays—and presumably pays without a murmur.
For his four weeks’ attendance at Sandringham, prior to the recovery
of the king from typhoid fever, in 1871, Sir William Gull received
fifty thousand dollars. Twice this amount was paid to Sir Morell
Mackenzie for his treatment of the late Emperor Frederick.
The doctors who attended Queen Victoria in her last illness received
two thousand guineas each; while Dr. Lapponi’s skill in removing a
cyst from the Pope’s side a few years ago was recompensed with two
thousand five hundred dollars. Dr. Dinsdale, for his journey to Saint
Petersburg and vaccination of the Empress Catharine II, received fifty
thousand dollars as his fee, twenty-five thousand dollars for
traveling expenses, and a life pension of two thousand five hundred
dollars a year.
The fees of the physicians who attended King Edward during the illness
which preceded his coronation amounted to more than one hundred
thousand dollars.