ICIPLING AND THE DOCTORS.
[TO THE EDITO8 OF THE " SPECTATOR."I
Six,—Referring to the report of Mr. Rudyard Ripling's brilliant and stirring address a few days since to the students of the Middlesex Hospital, perhaps I may be allowed to relate a story as an instance of the heroism doctors can display in trying circumstances. I have had the pleasure of meeting, and being treated more or less by, twenty-two medical men whose names I could recount, and therefore have had a pretty large experience. The story is this. One of a large family, I had a younger brother subject to frequent attacks of hemorrhage from the nose, and in earlier days the only way of saving such a sufferer from death seemed to be by plugging both nostrils. Indeed, some celebrities called to see the patient, and, though they were pleased to call it a "very interesting case," they could not advise any other remedy, though one or two bad been tried, but failed. I can remember vividly being called up about three or four o'clock one dark winter's morning with snow on the ground "to fetch the doctor." When I arrived at his house he put his head out of window, promising to come round as quickly as possible. My little part was to bold owl of the lights at the bedside; but noticing that I was about to collapse, he peremptorily ordered me to put down the light and go, which I did, and promptly fell into a fainting-fit at the foot of the stairs. Recovering myself, and meeting the doctor leaving the house, I tried to apologiee for my weak behaviour, but was told by him that few novices would pass through such an ordeal without the same result. The doctor said he had performed the operation under difficulty, and expected we had thought him a little tardy in arriving, but all the time at the operation he had had his clothes pressing upon an abscess, and he bad come through the snow and sleet leaving a wife at home in an almost dying condition. Of course I may be wrong, but I can hardly con- ceive of more heroic behaviour on a battlefield, where acts such as these might be related in the newspapers to the public ; but my story is only known to myself and a small circle of friends. The patient and doctor have passed away, but the patience of the former and the bravery of the latter can never fade from my memory. I may mid that an old friend and physician had asked this doctor to make his fees light, as we were not in those days in what are termed comfortable circumstances. The bill arrived, with a graceful note accompanying it, saying the fees could have been made larger, but if we thought the bill too much be would be perfectly satisfied with anything leas we might hand him. .1 need hardly say that with such a man it was quite unnecessary, as the bill was so ridiculously small, and we insisted on his taking our cheque for double the amount.—Hoping my story may interest and act as a stimulant to many a student, I am,
[Surely doctors are the most generous of men. Is there any other profession which habitually lowers its fees because people are poor, or supposed to be poor ? The last man to be paid by the miper or the spendthrift, or sometimes by the prudent than, is the doctor, Yet the doctors seem content
to treat this piece of "human nature" as natural and inevitable, and rather as a matter for humorous comment than for complaint.—ED. Spectator.]
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