He is too right in his prediction, and so is the surgeon who refused to operate, and he has lost a large fee; he receives the verification of his prediction subsequently from the patient, who exclaims, "Sir, I never have a moment's ease!" and when, after weeks of suffering, the patient dies, the surgeon consoles himself with the melancholy satisfaction of not having contributed to sufferings which he was called in too late to remedy.
The more plastic practitioner has, it is true, taken fifty or a hundred guineas, it may be, out of the one pocket, and put it into his own; but in what way are mankind benefited? or does any one really think that the apparent gainer can ultimately be so? The fault in this, as in many other cases, is the ignorance of the public. There is nothing in the foregoing sketch that was not as easily intelligible to the commonest understanding, as that two and two are equal to four! And is it no evil that one man should pay so large a sum for so plain a piece of honesty? or that another should be rewarded, as the case may be, for ignorance, or a compromise of his duty?
Let us take another case. A gentleman was called on to give a certificate; he examined the case, and found that the wording of the certificate called on him to certify to that which was diametrically opposite to the fact. He naturally declined, and, as the point was of some importance, went to the parties to explain. He was then informed that two professional men had, the previous day, given the certificate without hesitation. He is complimented on his conscientiousness, but never employed again by that family; and he has the further satisfaction of hearing that his place is supplied by one of his more accommodating brethren! We fear that in such a case there is a balance to be adjusted between the several persons, and an appropriate appellation to be discovered besides. We respectfully leave it to the reader's judgment to adjust the one, and to draw on his aptitude for nomenclature to supply the other.
Again, a man is called in to a consultation; he disapproves of the treatment, but declares to the friends of the patient that every thing has been very properly done. In another case of consultation, finding that every thing has been really conducted properly, he commences an _apparently_ different treatment, but essentially the same, without giving his confiding brother the benefit which his acquiescence in his views would necessarily imply.