High Spirits

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879. Excerpt: ... with beef-steaks and port wine. He had, indeed, no fancy for this new fashion of old fashions--no doctor is a fanatic, it may be observed, in anything but medicine or surgery--but as some of his clients were addicted to it, he looked upon the weakness with a very charitable eye. 'It is not enough nowadays to take things as we find them, my dear Selwyn,' he would say good-humouredly, 'but as we used to find them. If a patient thinks a fumigation of boiled hollyhock and fennel will do him good because his ancestor in King John's time used it, let him be fumigated. Never cross a patient in little things. Lord Vavasour thinks there is nothing like gold for his system because Galen speaks of it as a fine old remedy. In a general way--that is, to the general practitioner--this might be dangerous, because, once in the system, gold remains there, and one must wait for the post-mortem to get it out again; but with our patients we always see our money back. Therefore, give them gold.' Whatever Selwyn may have thought of Dr. Dalrymple professionally, he had no doubt of his wisdom as a man of the world, and was quite willing to profit by it. Moreover, his own conscience was not burdened by adopting these abnormal modes of treatment, since his practice lay among the middle class of patients--who were rarely bitten by this mania--while his principal kept the bigwigs for himself. But on one occasion Dr. Dalrymple fell a victim to the very malady which it was his chief office to cure in others--the gout. It was his own impression that he caught it of some of his patients. He felt certain, living so moderately as he did, with only a glass or two of Madeira at luncheon, and one bottle of wholesome port, 'without a headache in a hogshead of it'--after dinner, that he couldn...


Genre: Literary Fiction