Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Doctors' bills / [Charles Dickens]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![A /'$ ( i:Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD HOUSEHOLD WORDS., s i - A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 24 CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENSv . _ ... »x- _ —=ry N°- 381.1 ~ SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1857. DOCTORS’ BILLS. When a young gentleman who has no in- capacity for the enjoyment of baked meats and pastry, being tried with beef can eat none, being tried with turkey turns against poultry, chokes in the struggle to get pud- ding down, and even lets a strawberry lie whole in his mouth because he cannot make up his mind to swallow it, there is a question that may reasonably occur to his friends,—Can he be hungry ? We are good friends of the medical profession, and we have now at our elbow a pile of Parliamen- tary bills that have been introduced by one at a time or two at a time—just now trial is being made with two at a time—under the belief that each may be the bill beginning, “ Whereas it is expedient to amend the laws relating to the medical profession,” which the medical profession says it wants. The profession cries, or is said to cry, “ Beef! ” gets beef, and declares it too tough or too tender, too dry or too juicy. Away it goes. The profession cries—or is said to cry— “Pudding ! ” and is offered a great choice of puddings, but eats none. The profession only wants a bit of cheese, but there is no cheese that is the cheese. Yet the profes- sion, though it can eat nothing, really seems to feel uneasy in the stomach. As friends, we suggest that, perhaps the sense is one, not of a void to be filled, but of a weight to be thrown off. The similitude is less agreeable ;than apt. We take another. | A young lady, tending to be buxom, feels a difficulty in getting on, complains of cold at the extremities, looks blue in the jj face, and calls in a variety of surgeons and physicians. The young lady’s name is Miss Hygeia. One adviser prescribes blisters to •' the right leg, another prescribes blisters to the left leg ; various cunning surgeons even isuggest odd morsels of amputation here and there, and there is no potion that is not to be found in the prescriptions laid upon the table for her benefit,—upon the table of the House of Commons. The young lady is the medical profession. Some very ordinary persons, who are not cunning at all, don’t see any use in blistering her legs—cauterising by law the medical corporations — or in shaving her head, and cupping her behind the brain—taking the strength, by law, out of the universities ; and think it a wise instinct that keeps her from the swallowing of any legal potion. It is, they say, a pure case of tight lacing. Cut her stays. While we write, two rival dockets of opinion and advice upon her case—medical bills—are before the public. In each, the advice is to put her in some sort of irons, dose, and bandage her ; in neither is it re- commended that her chest be cut loose, and allowed to work as it can Avork if left to nature. A woman can live without being fixed in a machine that shall inflate her lungs for her, push up her diaphragm, and regulate the rise and fall of every rib. So can a profession ; though the legislators for physician, surgeon, and apothecary don’t appear to think so. Of the two courses of treatment proposed in the case of Hygeia (the one by Mr. Headlam, the other by Lord Elcho), one involves more cramping and dosing than the other, and is, therefore, by so much worse than the other. If either be adopted, we shall presently have reason to show why one should be taken and the other left. But we have, in the first place, our own counsel to give. Undoubtedly Hygeia is blue in the face ; she does find some diffi- culty in getting on, she is very much starved at the extremities, and is weaker than she ought to be about the head. Something must be done for her ; but what ] We say, do not dose, bleed, blister, amputate, or bandage : simply, Cut her stays. Setting aside metaphor, let us ask what is the main thing proposed by the law-makers ? —or the bill-makers : they never get so far as to the making of a law. “ For the good of the public,” one bill declares itself to be. “ For the good of the profession, I am,” says another. Here is one that was introduced by Mr. Warburton, Mr. Wakley, and Mr. Hawes, in theyear eighteen hundred and forty,—whereas and because it was “ expedient that all male persons practising medicine in the United Kingdom should be registered; and that all properly educated medical practitioners should be encouraged to exercise their pro- fession, in all or any of its branches in what- soever parts of the British,”—et caetera. The bill set up a machinery of registrars and vol. xvi. 381](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22465996_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
