"My Novel" — Volume 05

CHAPTER XIII

At seven o'clock Dr. Dosewell arrived, and was shown into the room of the homoeopathist, who, already up and dressed, had visited his patient.

"My name is Morgan," said the homoeopathist; "I am a physician. I leave in your hands a patient whom, I fear, neither I nor you can restore. Come and look at him."

The two doctors went into the sick-room. Mr. Digby was very feeble, but he had recovered his consciousness, and inclined his head courteously.

"I am sorry to cause so much trouble," said he. The homoeopathist drew away Helen; the allopathist seated himself by the bedside and put his questions, felt the pulse, sounded the lungs, and looked at the tongue of the patient. Helen's eye was fixed on the strange doctor, and her colour rose, and her eye sparkled when he got up cheerfully, and said in a pleasant voice, "You may have a little tea."

"Tea!" growled the homceopathist,—"barbarian!"

"He is better, then, sir?" said Helen, creeping to the allopathist.

"Oh, yes, my dear,—certainly; and we shall do very well, I hope."

The two doctors then withdrew.

"Last about a week!" said Dr. Dosewell, smiling pleasantly, and showing a very white set of teeth.

"I should have said a month; but our systems are different," replied Dr.

Morgan, dryly.

DR. DOSEWELL (courteously).—"We country doctors bow to our metropolitan superiors; what would you advise? You would venture, perhaps, the experiment of bleeding."

DR. MORGAN (spluttering and growling Welsh, which he never did but in excitement).—"Pleed! Cott in heaven! do you think I am a putcher,—an executioner? Pleed! Never."

DR. DOSEWELL.—"I don't find it answer, myself, when both lungs are gone!

But perhaps you are for inhaling?"

DR. MORGAN.—"Fiddledee!"

DR. DOSEWELL (with some displeasure).—"What would you advise, then, in order to prolong our patient's life for a month?"

DR. MORGAN.—"Give him Rhus!"

DR. DOSEWELL.—"Rhus, sir! Rhus! I don't know that medicine. Rhus!"

Dr. MORGAN.—"Rhus Toxicodendron."

The length of the last word excited Dr. Dosewell's respect. A word of five syllables,—that was something like! He bowed deferentially, but still looked puzzled. At last he said, smiling frankly, "You great London practitioners have so many new medicines: may I ask what Rhus toxico—toxico—"

"Dendron."

"Is?"

"The juice of the upas,—vulgarly called the poison-tree." Dr. Dosewell started.

"Upas—poison-tree—little birds that come under the shade fall down dead! You give upas juice in these desperate cases: what's the dose?"

Dr. Morgan grinned maliciously, and produced a globule the size of a small pin's head.

Dr. Dosewell recoiled in disgust.

"Oh!" said he, very coldly, and assuming at once an air of superb superiority, "I see, a homoeopathist, sir!"

"A homoeopathist."

"Um!"

"Um!"

"A strange system, Dr. Morgan," said Dr. Dosewell, recovering his cheerful smile, but with a curl of contempt in it, "and would soon do for the druggists."

"Serve 'em right. The druggists soon do for the patients."

"Sir!"

"Sir!"

DR. DOSEWELL (with dignity).—-"You don't know, perhaps, Dr. Morgan, that I am an apothecary as well as a surgeon. In fact," he added, with a certain grand humility, "I have not yet taken a diploma, and am but doctor by courtesy."

DR. MORGAN.—"All one, sir! Doctor signs the death-warrant, 'pothecary does the deed!"

DR. DOSEWELL (with a withering sneer).—"Certainly we don't profess to keep a dying man alive upon the juice of the deadly upas-tree."

DR. MORGAN (complacently).—"Of course you don't. There are no poisons with us. That's just the difference between you and me, Dr. Dosewell."

DR. DOSEWELL (pointing to the homceopathist's travelling pharmacopoeia, and with affected candour).—"Indeed, I have always said that if you can do no good, you can do no harm, with your infinitesimals."

DR. MORGAN, who had been obtuse to the insinuation of poisoning, fires up violently at the charge of doing no harm. "You know nothing about it! I could kill quite as many people as you, if I chose it; but I don't choose."

DR. DOSEWELL (shrugging his shoulders).—"Sir Sir! It is no use arguing; the thing's against common-sense. In short, it is my firm belief that it is—is a complete—"

DR. MORGAN.—"A complete what?"

DR. DOSEWELL (provoked to the utmost).—"Humbug!"

DR. MORGAN.—"Humbug! Cott in heaven! You old—"

DR. DOSEWELL.—"Old what, sir?"

DR. MORGAN (at home in a series of alliteral vowels, which none but a Cymbrian could have uttered without gasping).—"Old allopathical anthropophagite!"

DR. DOSEWELL (starting up, seizing by the back the chair on which he had sat, and bringing it down violently on its four legs).—"Sir!"

DR. MORGAN (imitating the action with his own chair).—"Sir!"