"Take not every opinion on this subject, but judge a little for yourself. "Pause when you see any thing in the doctor's manner different from that of any other gentleman; no matter how well he is talked of. No gentleman can stoop to trick, any more than the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots. "The medical profession, you must be aware, opens, from its mysterious nature, one of the finest fields for low trick, and accordingly it is filled with men not very remote from the canaille. Look twice at your fee before you cross the threshold of that healer whose door you see habitually beset with servants or paupers. There can be no reason why doctors should be really more liberal of their labour and charity than other men. Observe if there is any thing gaudy or remarkable about his carriage, or gait, or person, calculated to attract the gaze of the bystanders. The carriage very often is only doing the duty of the tub to catch the whale, and is particularly successful with gudgeons. Take care you are not hooked on. I never used to see one of these busy pill-boxes paraded about for notoriety, that it did not remind me of Juvenal's indignation at Matho: nam quis inique Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus, ut teneat se For Causidici read only Medici, and you have names in plenty to fill up the blank for Matho. 66 Vehemently distrust the leech who undertakes to be herald of his own fame; and set no bounds to your suspicion if you see him pulling letters out of his pocket, (which was a very common ruse in my time) reciting his miracles with a patient, especially if that patient be of the other sex. Any great demonstration of hurry is a stale trick; so is the delivery of pressing notes in crowds or public places. They are too common placed to impose upon a man of any discernment. The true genius of the doctor is in bringing the services of his friends to bear in finding some adroit man or woman, (a woman is worth a score of our sex) posset qui ferre secundas, who can bring the doctor on the tapis with effect, which she can do in so many ways that it is impossible to distinguish the acting from pure nature. The only rule I can offer here is, to pause on all occasions before you employ any medical man, whose merits you hear a woman take much pains to extol." The rest of this letter was taken up with a sort of list of the various artifices which the doctor employs to keep the sex in his interest; but I spare my reader, as they offer so very little of novelty. What an awful and humiliating view does not all this present of poor human nature! By what unaccountable infatuation is it that men should be so ready to intrust their most valuable possession, that of health, to persons of whom they probably know literally nothing but by accident, while in respect to all other kinds of this world's goods they are so warily cautious! No man intrusts his property at random to a law opinion, of the competency of which he has not some very reasonable grounds of confidence; yet he takes the doctor upon his own certificate! How does it never occur to him that credulity is the weakness by which one half of the world is enabled to live on the other?--the same which was charmed with the ghost story at six, and swallows the doctor's at sixty. People are outrageous at paying taxes, and yet are they taxed by this single weakness in more than all they pay to the state. Shakspeare tells us that "the drunkard puts a thief into his mouth to steal away his brains;" but a man who rushes into the hands of an ignorant leech without surety as to his skill and character, turns a triple felo de se, conspiring, at the same instant, against his purse, his brains, and his life! That I may not appear to have drawn a harsh outline of this too frequent class of ignorant men who practise upon us at home under the promiscuous name of doctor, I shall give an extract from Vicesimus Knox on the subject,an authority to whose impartiality and sound information on every thing connected with education, I believe there are few who will not readily defer. "It is really lamentable," says he, "to observe the extreme ignorance of those among medical practitioners who are applied to in the first instance, and who constitute the most numerous class. They are taken from a writing school, or perhaps a grammar school, and bound apprentices, so that upon the whole their education may be said to be about equal to that of a pauper in a parish day-school. Their business is to stand behind a counter and compound medicines by the prescriptions of the doctor. The poor lad, if he has time, will toil at his dictionary, where, however, he often toils in vain : but if he has not time, which is usually the case, he takes the most expeditious method of doing business. After having spent seven years in a shop, compounding drugs and spreading plasters, and after having acquired a little paltry portion of mechanical knowledge by constant habit, he is dismissed as complete; and going into the country a bold professor of chirurgery and pharmacy, with a smart dress, an unblushing countenance, and a voluble tongue, he is sure of succe And bids defiance to all the learning |