"How it calls to mind the image of Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, when, with a smattering of medical knowledge and a German diploma, he tried to pick out of the miseries and ignorance of his fellow-creatures the means of keeping soul and body together! He, too, poet and doctor, would have sold a pot of rouge to a faded beauty, or a bottle of hair dye, or a nostrum warranted to cure the bite of a mad dog."
"Set a rogue to catch a rogue." And to this principle we are indebted for the exposition of many fallacies and humbugs pursued by early physicians in order to gain practice.
"Dr. Radcliffe," says Dr. Hannes, "on his arrival in London, employed half of the porters in town to call for him at the coffee-houses (a famous resort of physicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and places of public resort, so that his name might become known."
On the other hand, Radcliffe accused Dr. Hannes of the same trick a few years later. Doctors were doctors' own worst enemies. Instead of standing by each other of the same school, in lip service, or passing by each other's errors and imperfections in silence, as they do nowadays, they quarrelled continually, accusing each other of the very tricks they practised themselves.
Of Dr. Meade it was confidently asserted, that without practice at first, he opened extensive correspondence with all the nurses and midwives in his vicinity, associated and conversed with apothecaries and gossips, who, hoping for his trade, would recommend him as a skilful practitioner. The ruse worked, and soon the doctor found his calls were _bona fide_. This is a trick that some American physicians we know of may have learned from Dr. Meade. Certainly they know and practise the deception.
When Dr. Hannes went to London, he opened the campaign with a coach and four. The carriage was of the most imposing appearance, the horses were the best bloods, sleek and high-spirited, the harnesses and caparisons of the richest mountings of silver and gold, with the most elegant trimmings.
"By Jove, Radcliffe!" exclaimed Meade, "Dr. Hannes' horses are the finest I have ever seen."
"Umph," growled Radcliffe, "then he will be able to sell them for all the more." But Dr. Radcliffe's _prognosis_ was at fault for once; and notwithstanding all the prejudice that Radcliffe and his friends could bring to bear against Hannes, and the lampooning verses spread broadcast against him, he kept his "fine horses," and rode into a flourishing business.