OLD-TIME COUNTRY DOCTORS AND THEIR PATIENTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1942, 7 February 1889, Page 31

OLD-TIME COUNTRY DOCTORS AND THEIR PATIENTS.

Why should a newly born infant ba smeared all over with lard ? Or why should the poor little think have its head annotated with brandy ? I can account for this last practice on the part of many nurse, as I have seen the way in which they warm the spirit. The temperature of her mouth being about the same as that of the infant's head, the nurse takes a mouthful of brandy, and after allowing it time to grow thoroughly warm, she ejects some or all of the diluted spirit into her hand and pours it over the little round head. Brandy must be very attractive to the poor, if one may judge from its universal use in emergencies. There is always consolation for the sorrowing relatives to be derived from it, even if the patient has gone beyond the need of stimulants. I knew an old farmer who was a doctof himself in a small way ; for instance, he had his finger crushed ; and it was so treated (not by me) that the bone projected from the stump. This he took away by rubbing ife down on the farmyard grindstone. The medical man who piloted him through his childhood's diseases must have practised about the beginning of the century, but he anticipated one point of modern practice, viz., dressing with fresh garden soil, aa follows front the old man's account of an attack of fever : — " Dr John Franks, he wur a practical man, he wur. What d'ye think ha did wi' I when I had the veaver ? [fever]. He told my mother she wur to have a hole dug in the gearden, and take I out of bed and put I neaked into thic there hole, cover I up, and there let I bide for zoo [so] long. Well, I got better, you knavv." And this being post hoc (treatment), was, of course, prqpter lioc. These notes have been mainly about patients. There is not much that is peculiar about country doctors in the present day; they are very much like the rest of the faculty. But 30 years ago, many of them wore a white necktie and black clothes, such as are now considered suitable for evening dress. This did not apply to riding the doctor, who went about on horseback in buckskin breeches and topboots. One gentleman of this kind left in his wardrobe at his death 24 pair of these enduring garments,.and he was the consultant of the neighbourhood, or, as his nickname went, the 'one-pound-one man.' Great was the consternation in a farmer's family when at the end of an attendance through a long illness this buckskin physician sent in a bill for 3()ogs. A similar emotion was felfc by another farmer in tho following circumstances : — His wife had a tumour which needed removal ; his own medical man was quite competent to do the operation, but the farmer wished a " London doctor" to officiate at the patient's house, about 120 miles from town. When all was done and the London surgeon about to leave, the husband said : " Please, sir, what be lin your debt ?" " Oh, let me see. Eighty guineas is the proper fee." The farmer very ruefully went and found £80, and said : " I suppose that will do, sir V (His own medical man would have

jfeceivedJ£B or £6.) Mileage may be a yery convenient basis for demanding A large fee, but surely it is a most fallacious and unjust mode of estimating the value of a medical man's services. The guinea per mile of the old consultants probably arose from the cost of postings which would be the only available means of reaching a patient in an emergenoy, or of getting into out-of-the way places at any time. But all this has been altered by the railway system, and consultants' fees have been lowered. In the old times the medical man was the friend of the family to such an extreme ' degree -that when a new member was added tho r doctor was expected to spend, many hours with the rejoicing father and his frjends. Pipes, beer, and abowl of punch helped to swell the general cheerfulness. . A lady told me that the medical man who Vas in attendance at the time of her birth received from, her father three guineas, half a loin of veal, and a hogshead of cider. I was once offered a pair of old silver sugartongs by way of a fee. , The poor have a naked directness about their remarks which would astonish sensitive people. A foolish nurse once bent over the bed of a very nervous woman and said to me in an awe-struck voice : "Do you think she will recover, sir?" Going up some very narrow stairs to see a young man who was seriously ill, his mother remarked to me: " These - stairs are very awkward, sir — very bad for getting a corpse down." It may comfort the reader to know that the patient was tnuch too dull of perception to be hurt by the unpleasant suggestion. , Cautions are given in works on nursing against talking in whispers before the patieat or in. an undertone just outside his <joor. But imagine the training and tact of $ London (not west-oountry) nurse who said to the gentleman in her charge : " When the change has come, would you like your faced washed every morning, sir ? Some gentlemen' do- -they say it is so refreshing." In anticipation, I suppose. But it was a delicate attention to the lifeless form, A little boy's leg had been broken by a kick from a cow. While I was setting tho fracture, the father, standing at the bottom of the bed, remarked sympathetically : "He allays wur a caddling [clumsy] little tooad." . But this is not the rule. Sympathy with suffering, kindness to their fellows in distress, and generosity out of all proportion to their means, are often met with among the simple, west-country folk. With an instance of this I will olose these notes — a labourer's wife, with children of her own, bending over and caring for her neighbour when in '• nature's hour of trouble," and at the same time sufferingfrom diphtheria ?— " Chambers' Journal."