The
great and good Boerhaave used to say, as I remember very well, that the
poor were his best patients; for God was their paymaster. But everybody
is not as patient as Boerhaave, nor as deserving; so that the rich,
though not, perhaps, the best patients, are good enough for common
practitioners. I suppose Boerhaave put up with them when he could not
get poor ones, as he left his daughter two millions of florins when he
died.
Now if this young man once got into the _wide streets_, he would sweep
them clear of his rivals of the same standing; and as I was getting
indifferent to business, and old Dr. Kilham was growing careless, and
had once or twice prescribed morphine when he meant quinine, there would
soon he an opening into the Doctors' Paradise,--the _streets with only
one side to them_. Then I would have him strike a bold stroke,--set up a
nice little coach, and be driven round like a London first-class doctor,
instead of coasting about in a shabby one-horse concern and casting
anchor opposite his patients' doors like a Cape-Ann fishing-smack. By
the time he was thirty, he would have knocked the social pawns out of
his way, and be ready to challenge a wife from the row of great pieces
in the background.
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