General practitioners
Bob Sawyer reappears when he is beginning practice in Bristol. Money still escapes hin, and he uses various stratagems to make his name known. These include delivering medicines to wrong addresses, and next day sending messages of apology: "Very sorry — his mistake — immense business — great many parcels to deliver — Mr Sawyer's compliments." Later he complains that "the poor people patronise me .... They knock me up, at all hours of the night: they take medicines to an extent which I should have conceived impossible; they put on blisters and leeches with a perseverance worthy of a better cause: they make additions to their families in a manner which is quite awful" and then offer "little promissory notes."
Sawyer and his friend Allen conclude that the only remedy for the financial stringency is for Sawyer to marry Arabella, who is due for a legacy ofone thousand pounds on coming of age, or on marriage. Arabella, Sawyer remarks, has "only one fault ... and that is a want of taste. She don't like me."
Also in Pickwick Papers, beset by similar mercenary motives, is Dr Slammer, surgeon to the 29th, "a little fat man ... a popular personage ... who was indefatigable in paying the most unremitting and devoted attention to a little old widow, whose rich dress and profusion of ornament bespoke her a most desirable addition to a limited income."
Oliver Twist had contact with three doctors. The parish surgeon, at his birth, had "difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration ... he had not been possessed of that very useful appendage, a voice, for ... longer than three minutes and a
quarter" but then "proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed on the parish."
At the Brownlow establishment Oliver was attended by "a gentleman with a very large and loud-ticking gold watch in his hand, who felt his pulse, and said he was a great deal better." This doctor showed great diplomacy, but lack of originality, in agreeing with all the symptomatology offered by his patient. Mr Losberne, the "surgeon in the neighbourhood" who attended to Oliver's wounds in the Maylie home, had "grown fat, more from good humour than from good living: and was kind and hearty ... an eccentric old bachelor." As a friend and family counsellor of the Maylies, he saved Oliver from arrest by the Bow Street
runners.
Another Pickwickian doctor distinguished by tact and diplomacy was the man called to Mrs Trundle, who was in a "delicate state ofhealth." He said that she "ought to know best how she felt herself." The doctor, "a wise and discreet doctor who knew what was good
for himself," agreed with her proposed trip to London, and "with great attention sent ... medicine to be drunk, upon the road." In somewhat the same mould was Dr Lumbey who, having delivered Mrs Kenwigs's sixth child, was emphatic that "It's the finest boy I ever
saw in all my life. I never saw such a baby." Dickens comments: "It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last." He ultimately fathered 10 children, and probably wrote from personal experience. Dr Lumbey ridiculed Mr Kenwigs's suggestion that six children were
"almost enough." "Nonsense," he said, "not half enough."
Doctors' treatments and prescriptions were often anticipated by the lay public. In The Old Curiosity Shop Little Nell has medical attention from a "red-nosed gentleman" who took "his seat by the bedside ... drew out his watch and felt her pulse." All his practical therapeutic suggestions were already in progress, so that, as he departed, he left "the whole house in admiration of that wisdom which tallied so closely withtheir own. Everybody said he was a very shrewd doctor indeed."
In the pages of Martin Chuzzlewit, Dr John Jobling, MRCS, was less modest and more anxious to impress. He "had a peculiar way of smacking his lips and saying 'Ah!' at intervals while patients detailed their symptoms, which inspired great confidence . . . he talked on
all occasions whether he had anything to say or not ... His female patients could never praise him too highly."
He was keen to display knowledge: "We know a few secrets of nature in our profession.... We study for that; we pass the Hall and the College for that; and we take our station in society by that."
Also in Martin Chuzzlewit, Dr Lewsome had been "bred a surgeon ... but served a general practitioner in the City, as his assistant." He was persuaded to apply what would today be called euthanasia to old Mr Anthony Chuzzlewit on the grounds that he was "weak, imbecile and drivelling; as unbearable to himself as he was to other people ... it would be a
charity to put him out of the way . . . mixing something with the stuff he took for his cough ... should help him to die easily." The argument used was that "people were sometimes smothered who were bitten by mad dogs ... why not help these lingering old men out of
their troubles too?" Such arguments have a familiar ring 150 years later.
Some family practitioners were held in great respect, not only as doctors. Dr Chillip attended Mrs Copperfield at David's birth and remained counsellor and friend into David's adulthood. He comforted David on the death of his mother and allowed him to "enjoy the
happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of the whole pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding something in a mortar under mild directions." Years later they met by chance, and Dr Chillip spurned gossip by saying, "a medical man being so much in families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his profession.'
More Articles
- Ferida Wolff's Backyard: Spring is Coming
- The Scout Report: Penn and Slavery Project, Robots Reading Vogue, Open Book Publishers, Black History in Two Minutes & Maps of Home
- Ferida Wolff's BackYard: Maple Seeds in Abundance; We Are Birds of a Feather: Is Our Tree of Life Starting to Weaken? It’s a Short Step From Tree-worry to People-worry
- Jo Freeman's Review of Michael Barone's How America’s Political Parties Change (And How They Don’t)
- Joan Cannon Asked: What is a Book Club? An Old-Fashioned Book Report? A Program Given By an Author? What Is the Accepted Practice?
- Scout Report: Computer Dating, "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu", Western Front WWI,Women's History, Vaccinations, Newsmap, "Look Out Honey, 'Cause I'm Using Technology"
- Book Reviews by Serena Nanda and Joan Gregg: Crime and Culture, Past is Present
- CultureWatch: Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste
- 2014: Books for Children and Young Adult Readers Certain to Make Good Holiday Presents
- Culture Watch. A The Art of Mystery Writing: What’s in a Series? The Latest Books of Andrea Camilleri, Linda Fairstein, Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling), Donna Leon and Louise Penny