A DAY WITH A DOCTOR.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4282, 18 April 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

A DAY WITH A DOCTOR.

By ' Q.. E. D.' ' Jump in the busgy, and put this nig over your knees, and I'll take.you round with me. Onlyremomber, pleaso,you must try and look very mysterious, and hot object to my calling you doctor.' 'Object, my dear fellow, there is nothing I would like so much as to experience for once a little of the superstitious awe that surrounds a medical man —tho public, I know, have the strangest notions about what you men can do. But to continue our conversation, for it interests me a good deal, don't you really think that Nature is a little reckless in .her methods. Take that child with h.ip-joint disease, that has just left, your surgery. . You told mc, if! understood you, that that child's failure "in life was due.to some failure in its scheme of circulation, and a vital part, his hip joint, was dying in consequence. Now, why could not Mother Earth," who has dono so much, step in and prevent absolute ruin from a cause that ought to bo to hor so easily preventive.' '.' Mother Earth,' indeed!'.' 1 roally don't see how you can blame 'her ; you.i. ay with, as much justico blame my tailor for my bad figure. ' Mother Earth's' only business, as far as I can make it out, is simply one of ' clothing souls with clay.' No., sir, if you look into the matter you will find it is the thing clothed you don't like. Our ' universal provider' is tho kindest, gentlest, and most loving of step-dames. Take the case of the child you are speaking of. She had its clay mould ready, made to put, on creaseless and a perfect fit, and had the thing clothed been all right he could, when he stepped out of the great inane on to the earth, have quietly drersed himself therein and strolled across her flower-clad bosom and off again into the great inane, leaving tli3 mother only his footprints and his old clothing. But, moro than that, she not only finds tho clothes, she keeps them in repair, -charges nothing for use, and when you havo done with them. takes them off your hands 'as returned empties,' and by some mysterious method of her own makes flowers of them wherewith to perpetuate your memory.

if she sees things arc not all right, as in the case of the child we arc speaking of, she says, ' i'ou'll never make a decent man ; you'll never want this garment I lent you ; I'll' take it off your hands at onco and make potatoes of it;' and so,' as you saw, she quietly stops the circulation works. No, sir, I must say again, I think our bodies have in Mother Earth an .extremely kind parent-. She clothes us most beautifully ; she'feeds us most generously ; she rocks us to rest each night, and if we will only behave ourselves sho entertains us for seventy odd years in her own peculiar mako-j'ourself-quite-at-honiw-nnd - wander- wb'erc-you-likc sort of way, nnd when quite tired out, she, with her foot on tho cradle and singing her sweetest lullabies, rocks .you into your long rest as you ' pluck at the bed-elothc3 and babble of green fields.' '

' One moment, my dear fellow, are you so certain about Nature being a good tailor ? For my part I must say I think she lias a very hap-hazard way of doing things, or why should your great guns talk of a man being 'younger than his arteries' or his frame. 'Why should I be broken-winded when I have dono nothing to deserve it? Why should this man die of apoplexy because his heart is too large, or the other labor with eternal hingor becauso his is too small? It always appears to mo that the foreman of Nature's tailoring department has his materials arranged in boxes on shelves, and in the hurry of this overpopulating age has ho-'timo to think of fits, but shouts ' Heart here,' and now 'Lungs and be quick with them, there's another customer waiting,' and the apprentice rushing fo the-boxes labelled 'Brains/ 'Viscera,' or what not, dips his hand into thorn and lakes the first that comes to ha.nl, and so men are made. If I had'— —-

■ ' Whoa man, gently over the stones hero; hold on to the buggy, that's right. Now, look lidre, your theory would be all right if Nature had full after control of the garment she lout; but she has no!. As we have seen, she supplies the garment and the materials for its'repair j she does 7 more than this, she sews on'the inside the' most perfect directions as to how to■'repair—tliCßD wo call ' appetites,' or ' instincts.- 1 ' Now wero these liilfowi'd there'wquld lie none of the inoonsrnnties- yon liienliori.' But they are not; in fact, ihey are so universally disregarded that"ypu' never see a body that- has!boon equally developed in' all directions or-pro-' pt-rly 'drvcloped'in any. Take tho case of : thisgirl that wo are- just going to sco, it's atypical instance of the'lost bultmce—that is the serc'.t of all ill-henlth.'

' What's the matter with her ? l

•''•Well, the ,-iiieieiita calJdd it being possessed of a devil, and treated it with persecution." We call it epilepsy, and treat it with

bromide of potassium. As far as tho diagnosis goes, they were nearest the truth ; it is a devil she's got —the devil of nervous discord. Thoir treatment was not scientific or kind, but it was far better for the race than ours, for by palliative measures wo keop them going until they havo married and begotten a family with, similar tendencies. But here we are.

' Good morning, Mrs Jones. I have brought a friend to'sec.your daughter with me. How is she ?'

' She's better, sir; but the twitchings are awful.'

' Never mmd those ; they are only the tailend of the storm. How does she sleep ?.'

c Like a top, sir. Mo and my husband thought last night she would never awaken.' ' Sever mind that either ; sleep's the best possible thing for her. Let her sleep as much as possible, and keep the room dark. Good morning. I'll call to-morrow.'

' Now, take tho reins a moment, while I put my gloves on—thanks. Has it ever occurred to you what a beautiful profession oiu-s would bo if only the public knew a little physiology ? Is not it an extraordinary system of education that teaches our children a littlo about this world, all about tho next, and nothing about themselves ? Now, that case. How simple hor treatment would be if only you could say to the mother, 'Your daughter, my dear madarne, has lost her balance ; hor brain gets more than its share of nourishment, and her body, in its violent protestations against tho unequal division gets into a passion sometimes and 'casteth her into the water,' and lids sleep that you arc afraid of is simply tho tiredness that follows the effort.' But if you wero to talk like that to them they would think you were ' putting tho side on,' dismiss you at once, and send for tho nearest man who had the art of being mysterious to the level of a science. But wait a moment ; I want to run in hero to soe a man -who has a liver — ' There, I have not kept you long wait-

ir.g.' 'No ; but what did you mean by seeing a man with a liver —has not everybody a liver ?'

' Most certainly ; but it is not everybody that knows they havo. Believe me, tho greatest misfortune in this world is to know that you have any organ—to be for ever conscious of the fact that you have a heart, lungs, or a stomach, or, in fact, any function which robs life of all its pleasure. There is.no tyranny in this world like the tyranny of an over-developed gland. Once give the reins of government, into the hands of your liver, Or any other part of you, and you'll be driven to destruction ; and yet every man or woman you meet lias put one or the other of them on the box-seat, and i 3 now grumbling at the result.'

' But surely, my dear sir, you would allow the brain to retain its right to govern ?' .

'Sh ! sh ! you aro opening a very big question, and all I can say is that the best work in this world, whether it is in the state or iv tho body, which is a state in miniature, is done unconsciously. The sleepwalker can tread the edge of a razor, the conjuror can deceive his own senses ! Ivctten, the pianist, could play most miraculously and think of other things (principally himself) the whole time. Look at a steam engine, how perfectly it does its work, and the printing-press that produced your Argus this morning; there is no work done directly by man's hands thatat all approaches it; and why? Because they—tho steamengine and printing-press —are thoughts oncased in wood and steel, instead of clay, and are started on their roads without any of our (so-called) freedom of will. -

' Consciousness, after all, is a very small matter in tho world's economy. 'Tis merely the sunlit wave-tops that indicate more oriels truly tho character of the deep undercurrent of tho great unseen, unconscious hfo within us. A man's individuality is but an epitome of the individualities of his several organs added together, and if oii.o only knew a little physiology and. a little mathematics, ono could (letting tho letters stand for the organs, B brain, S stomach, and so on), very conveniently enter one's cases in one's book in tho form of an eqnation, thus— L 5 + H—B XSg = Mr. So& So. And by looking it through one would know instantly if Mr So-and-so were worth knowing or not. ' The.funny part of it is that nearly all man's physical troubles are put down to the credit of tho liver—whereas in nine cases out.of ten it's tho -stomach' that's at fault. Of all the mighty influences at work in this world, thore is none so powerful as the influence of gastric juice. A leading literary man fold me the other day that he believed Sartorllcsarlus was a symptom of dyspepsia, lam not quite certain that this is absolutely.true, but one thing about Carlyle is well known, and that is that his stomach had the box-scat. ' A man, believe mc, has no better friend and no worse foe than his stomach. It is the shortest road to the heart, tho motive power of his brain, and has full command of his purso-strings, as tho world well knows, or why charity dinners, why auction lunches ? Do you suppose I should give a dinner once a week, to my patients if I had not learnt that much ?. 1 never wrote but one poem in my life, and that was ' An Ode to My Stomach.' Here is avorsc of it :— '' Tho deep ocean of thought, mystic and grand, Waits on thy bounty, generous hand. Sentiment, humor, all science profuse Depend on the working of gastric vice.' ' All other influences are very transient' but the stomach's lasts until the meal's digested fully 25 minutes. A rich friend of mine said the other day, ' I never come away 1 ' from hearing- good music without feeling capable of any noble action.' I doubted this, but wanting five pounds very badly, I waylaid him as he left the townhall oratorio a few nights after; he was looking the picture of benevolence. I led rapidly up to the question of the loan. His face gradually hardened until, when I had finished, lie said with very littlo music in his voice—' I am really extremely sorry, but.' kc Now, had lie dined witli me how different the result would have been. But here we arc at another patient's. This is a ease of hair-lip ; you must come in and sec it. 'Hair-lip, you know, of course, is the best instance thero is of arrested development, and a great argument in favor of Darwinism.' ' You are an evolutionist, of course.' ' Well, that altogetor depends upon how you'spell evolution; if you spell ij; with a big- E then 1 am not, if with a littlo 10 then I am. I have not tho slightest objection to having a monkey for my ancestor, but I 6o object to founding a religion on tho fact. Bub ivo will see this case after"lunch. I had no idea it was so late.' —Melbourne Argus.