doctor forget to come some time when he is expected,
and get nervous about it, instead of getting nervous because the
pill-bags is there all the time, smelling of everything.
Let a doctor that is due at the bedside at 4 o'clock, say, stay away
till 6, and then come in and tell about being down on the South Side
to see about somebody's having a sick baby, or to sew up a man that has
been to a circus, and the cross patient that has been waiting for the
doctor till he got mad, is better at once. It cheers him to know that
somebody else has a baby or had a gash cut in him in a fight, and
changes his mind about swearing at the doctor, and feels better.
Why, some of our best doctors never think of curing a man until they get
him mad a few times. It braces a man up to get mad and think, "Now that
confounded old pill-bags has forgotten all about me, and I'll bet he is
in a saloon somewhere shaking the dice for the drinks." A sick man gains
strength, actually, lying in bed and thinking how he would like to kick
the stuffin' out of a doctor.
A doctor who has only one patient is a damage to the patient, and
Garfield has suffered more by having those doctors around when he ought
to have been left alone till he yearned for them, than anybody imagines.
Why, the feeling of a man's pulse for half an hour, and timing it as you
would a trotting horse, is enough to make a well man sick. What a doctor
wants to do is to feel of a man's pulse about one second, and then throw
the patient's hand down and say: "O, you are all right. We will have you
entered in a walking match next week."
He wants to say something of this kind if the man is dying. A doctor has
got to be a good deal of a liar, to succeed. We do not mean to say Bliss
is not a liar, but somehow he does not seem to display judgment. He is
too much of a stayer. Bliss is too frequent.
THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ABE TALKING ABOUT.
A celebrated writer on the state of the country, has an article in a
magazine, in which occurs the following paragraph:
"The defects of the New England girl may be done away with by giving
less prominence to the purely intellectual or purely practical side of
her education."
In the first place, we do not admit that there are any defects in the
Boston girl, but if there _are_ defects, as is alleged by the writer
above, and by other scientific persons, we do not see how giving less
prominence to her intellectuality is going to do away with
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