It usually ends in the banker taking the entire lot at 10 per cent. He will collect every dollar on them, and the doctor has got rid of a lot of paper on which he would have hard work in getting half of its face value. This plan seldom fails when carried out in the right way.
There is one class of notes on which the signers rarely make a contest. These are the ones given in payment for sexual treatment. A physician is, as a rule, safe in taking a note under these conditions as he can usually collect the full amount. Men are delicate about this trouble and don’t want their friends and neighbors to know what they have been treated for. To resist payment means a law suit in which the physician will go on the stand and, under the questioning of his attorney, bring out the fact that John Jones, the maker of the note, gave it in payment of treatment for prostratitis, or some other sexual ailment. Pressed for details he lays bare the whole facts of the case to the intense mortification of Jones.
The doctor, of course, could decline to answer such questions on the ground that it would be a violation of the confidence existing between a physician and his patient, but he doesn’t want to do so. He’s there to collect that note, and in furtherance of this purpose he has posted his attorney in advance as to the questions to be asked.
Most men of sense know this and will pay their notes, regardless of whether they have been helped or not, rather than submit to the humiliation which they know will be heaped on them when the doctor takes the stand.
The hardest notes to collect are those given in payment for the treatment of ailments other than sexual disorders. But even these, if made out in the manner outlined in the opening part of this chapter, can be realized on in full. Suppose a man living in Iowa gives a note of this kind to a Chicago physician. The latter discounts it immediately at his local bank which takes it, not because the maker is known, but on account of the doctor’s endorsement. Just before maturity the note is forwarded to the maker’s local bank for collection. The local banker notifies the maker that it holds the note, which will be due on such a day. What does the maker do? Why, he antes, of course. The note is in the hands of his local banker, a person with whom he is anxious to preserve his credit. In such a case, with the note drawn to the order of the signer and endorsed by him, there can be no plea of “no value received.” Besides, the obligation is in the hands of an innocent holder before maturity.