As soon as I had seen Mowbray mounted, I went to attend upon poor Belton;
whom I found in dreadful agonies, in which he awoke, after he generally
does.
The doctor came in presently after, and I was concerned at the scene that
passed between them.
It opened with the dying man's asking him, with melancholy earnestness,
if nothing--if nothing at all could be done for him?
The doctor shook his head, and told him, he doubted not.
I cannot die, said the poor man--I cannot think of dying. I am very
desirous of living a little longer, if I could but be free from these
horrible pains in my stomach and head. Can you give me nothing to make
me pass one week--but one week, in tolerable ease, that I may die like a
man, if I must die!
But, Doctor, I am yet a young man; in the prime of my years--youth is a
good subject for a physician to work upon--Can you do nothing--nothing at
all for me, Doctor?
Alas! Sir, replied his physician, you have been long in a bad way. I
fear, I fear, nothing in physic can help you!
He was then out of all patience: What, then, is your art, Sir?--I have
been a passive machine for a whole twelvemonth, to be wrought upon at the
pleasure of you people of the faculty.--I verily believe, had I not taken
such doses of nasty stuff, I had been now a well man--But who the plague
would regard physicians, whose art is to cheat us with hopes while they
help to destroy us?--And who, not one of you, know any thing but by
guess?
Sir, continued he, fiercely, (and with more strength of voice and
coherence, than he had shown for several hours before,) if you give me
over, I give you over.--The only honest and certain part of the art of
healing is surgery. A good surgeon is worth a thousand of you. I have
been in surgeons' hands often, and have always found reason to depend
upon their skill; but your art, Sir, what is it?--but to daub, daub,
daub; load, load, load; plaster, plaster, plaster; till ye utterly
destroy the appetite first, and the constitution afterwards, which you
are called in to help. I had a companion once, my dear Belford, thou
knewest honest Blomer, as pretty a physician he would have made as any
in England, had he kept himself from excess in wine and women; and he
always used to say, there was nothing at all but the pick-pocket parade
in the physician's art; and that the best guesser was the best physician.
And I used to believe him too--and yet, fond of life, and fearful of
death, what do we do, when we are taken ill, but call ye in? And what
do ye do, when called in, but nurse our distempers, till from pigmies you
make giants of them? and then ye come creeping with solemn faces, when ye
are ashamed to prescribe, or when the stomach won't bear its natural
food, by reason of your poisonous potions,--Alas, I am afraid physic can
do no more for him!--Nor need it, when it has brought to the brink of the
grave the poor wretch who placed all his reliance in your cursed slops,
and the flattering hopes you gave him.
The doctor was out of countenance; but said, if we could make mortal men
immortal, and would not, all this might be just.
I blamed the poor man; yet excused him to the physician. To die, dear
Doctor, when, like my poor friend, we are so desirous of life, is a
melancholy thing. We are apt to hope too much, not considering that the
seeds of death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up, till,
like rampant weeds, they choke the tender flower of life; which declines
in us as those weeds flourish. We ought, therefore, to begin early to
study what our constitutions will bear, in order to root out, by
temperance, the weeds which the soil is most apt to produce; or, at
least, to keep them down as they rise; and not, when the flower or plant
is withered at the root, and the weed in its full vigour, expect, that
the medical art will restore the one, or destroy the other; when that
other, as I hinted, has been rooting itself in the habit from the time of
our birth.
This speech, Bob., thou wilt call a prettiness; but the allegory is just;
and thou hast not quite cured me of the metaphorical.
Very true, said the doctor; you have brought a good metaphor to
illustrate the thing. I am sorry I can do nothing for the gentleman; and
can only recommend patience, and a better frame of mind.
Well, Sir, said the poor angry man, vexed at the doctor, but more at
death, you will perhaps recommend the next succession to the physician,
when he can do no more; and, I suppose, will send your brother to pray by
me for those virtues which you wish me.
It seems the physician's brother is a clergyman in the neighbourhood.
I was greatly concerned to see the gentleman thus treated; and so I told
poor Belton when he was gone; but he continued impatient, and would not
be denied, he said, the liberty of talking to a man, who had taken so
many guineas of him for doing nothing, or worse than nothing, and never
declined one, though he know all the time he could do him no good.
It seems the gentleman, though rich, is noted for being greedy after
fees! and poor Belton went on raving at the extravagant fees of English
physicians, compared with those of the most eminent foreign ones. But,
poor man! he, like the Turks, who judge of a general by his success, (out
of patience to think he must die,) would have worshipped the doctor, and
not grudged thee times the sum, could he have given him hopes of
recovery.
But, nevertheless, I must needs say, that gentlemen of the faculty should
be more moderate in their fees, or take more pains to deserve them; for,
generally, they only come into a room, feel the sick man's pulse, ask the
nurse a few questions, inspect the patient's tongue, and, perhaps, his
water; then sit down, look plaguy wise, and write. The golden fee finds
the ready hand, and they hurry away, as if the sick man's room were
infectious. So to the next they troll, and to the next, if men of great
practice; valuing themselves upon the number of visits they make in a
morning, and the little time they make them in. They go to dinner and
unload their pockets; and sally out again to refill them. And thus, in a
little time, they raise vast estates; for, as Ratcliffe said, when first
told of a great loss which befell him, It was only going up and down one
hundred pairs of stairs to fetch it up.
Mrs. Sambre (Belton's sister) had several times proposed to him a
minister to pray by him, but the poor man could not, he said, bear the
thoughts of one; for that he should certainly die in an hour or two
after; and he was willing to hope still, against all probability, that he
might recover; and was often asking his sister if she had not seen people
as bad as he was, who, almost to a miracle, when every body gave them
over, had got up again?
She, shaking her head, told him she had; but, once saying, that their
disorders were of an acute kind, and such as had a crisis in them, he
called her Small-hopes, and Job's comforter; and bid her say nothing, if
she could not say more to the purpose, and what was fitter for a sick man
to hear. And yet, poor fellow, he has no hopes himself, as is plain by
his desponding terrors; one of which he fell into, and a very dreadful
one, soon after the doctor went.
***