第38章

I fear that I have done injustice in my conversation and my report of it to a most worthy and promising young man whom I should be very sorry to injure in any way.Dr.Benjamin Franklin got hold of my account of my visit to him, and complained that I had made too much of the expression he used.He did not mean to say that he thought Iwas suffering from the rare disease he mentioned, but only that the color reminded him of it.It was true that he had shown me various instruments, among them one for exploring the state of a part by means of a puncture, but he did not propose to make use of it upon my person.In short, I had colored the story so as to make him look ridiculous.

--I am afraid I did,--I said,--but was n't I colored myself so as to look ridiculous? I've heard it said that people with the jaundice see everything yellow; perhaps I saw things looking a little queerly, with that black and blue spot I could n't account for threatening to make a colored man and brother of me.But I am sorry if I have done you any wrong.I hope you won't lose any patients by my making a little fun of your meters and scopes and contrivances.They seem so odd to us outside people.Then the idea of being bronzed all over was such an alarming suggestion.But I did not mean to damage your business, which I trust is now considerable, and I shall certainly come to you again if I have need of the services of a physician.

Only don't mention the names of any diseases in English or Latin before me next time.I dreamed about cutis oenea half the night after I came to see you.

Dr.Benjamin took my apology very pleasantly.He did not want to be touchy about it, he said, but he had his way to make in the world, and found it a little hard at first, as most young men did.People were afraid to trust them, no matter how much they knew.One of the old doctors asked him to come in and examine a patient's heart for him the other day.He went with him accordingly, and when they stood by the bedside, he offered his stethoscope to the old doctor.The old doctor took it and put the wrong end to his ear and the other to the patient's chest, and kept it there about two minutes, looking all the time as wise as an old owl.Then he, Dr.Benjamin, took it and applied it properly, and made out where the trouble was in no time at all.But what was the use of a young man's pretending to know anything in the presence of an old owl? I saw by their looks, he said, that they all thought I used the, stethoscope wrong end up, and was nothing but a 'prentice hand to the old doctor.

--I am much pleased to say that since Dr.Benjamin has had charge of a dispensary district, and been visiting forty or fifty patients a day, I have reason to think he has grown a great deal more practical than when I made my visit to his office.I think I was probably one of his first patients, and that he naturally made the most of me.

But my second trial was much more satisfactory.I got an ugly cut from the carving-knife in an affair with a goose of iron constitution in which I came off second best.I at once adjourned with Dr.

Benjamin to his small office, and put myself in his hands.It was astonishing to see what a little experience of miscellaneous practice had done for him.He did not ask me anymore questions about my hereditary predispositions on the paternal and maternal sides.He did not examine me with the stethoscope or the laryngoscope.He only strapped up my cut, and informed me that it would speedily get well by the "first intention,"--an odd phrase enough, but sounding much less formidable than cutis oenea.

I am afraid I have had something of the French prejudice which embodies itself in the maxim "young surgeon, old physician." But a young physician who has been taught by great masters of the profession, in ample hospitals, starts in his profession knowing more than some old doctors have learned in a lifetime.Give him a little time to get the use of his wits in emergencies, and to know the little arts that do so much for a patient's comfort,--just as you give a young sailor time to get his sea-legs on and teach his stomach to behave itself,--and he will do well enough.

The old Master knows ten times more about this matter and about all the professions, as he does about everything else, than I do.My opinion is that he has studied two, if not three, of these professions in a regular course.I don't know that he has ever preached, except as Charles Lamb said Coleridge always did, for when he gets the bit in his teeth he runs away with the conversation, and if he only took a text his talk would be a sermon; but if he has not preached, he has made a study of theology, as many laymen do.I know he has some shelves of medical books in his library, and has ideas on the subject of the healing art.He confesses to having attended law lectures and having had much intercourse with lawyers.So he has something to say on almost any subject that happens to come up.Itold him my story about my visit to the young doctor, and asked him what he thought of youthful practitioners in general and of Dr.

Benjamin in particular.

I 'll tell you what,--the Master said,--I know something about these young fellows that come home with their heads full of "science," as they call it, and stick up their signs to tell people they know how to cure their headaches and stomach-aches.Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor.But if a man has n't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.

--I don't know that I see exactly how it is worse for the patient,--Isaid.

--Well, I'll tell you, and you'll find it's a mighty simple matter.