Part 15

You can divide mankind in the same way, I said. Two words, each of two letters, will serve to distinguish two classes of human beings who constitute the principal divisions of mankind. Can any of you tell what those two words are?

“Give me five letters,” cried Number Seven, “and I can solve your problem! F-o-o-l-s,--those five letters will give you the first and largest half. For the other fraction”--

Oh, but, said I, I restrict you absolutely to two letters. If you are going to take five, you may as well take twenty or a hundred.

After a few attempts, the company gave it up. The nearest approach to the correct answer was Number Five's guess of Oh and Ah: Oh signifying eternal striving after an ideal, which belongs to one kind of nature; and Ah the satisfaction of the other kind of nature, which rests at ease in what it has attained.

Good! I said to Number Five, but not the answer I am after. The great division between human beings is into the Ifs and the Ases.

“Is the last word to be spelt with one or two s's?” asked the young Doctor.

The company laughed feebly at this question. I answered it soberly. With one s. There are more foolish people among the Ifs than there are among the Ases.

The company looked puzzled, and asked for an explanation.

This is the meaning of those two words as I interpret them: If it were,--if it might be,--if it could be,--if it had been. One portion of mankind go through life always regretting, always whining, always imagining. These are the people whose backbones remain cartilaginous all their lives long, as do those of certain other vertebrate animals,--the sturgeons, for instance. A good many poets must be classed with this group of vertebrates.

As it is,--this is the way in which the other class of people look at the conditions in which they find themselves. They may be optimists or pessimists, they are very largely optimists,--but, taking things just as they find them, they adjust the facts to their wishes if they can; and if they cannot, then they adjust themselves to the facts. I venture to say that if one should count the Ifs and the Ases in the conversation of his acquaintances, he would find the more able and important persons among them--statesmen, generals, men of business--among the Ases, and the majority of the conspicuous failures among the Ifs. I don't know but this would be as good a test as that of Gideon,--lapping the water or taking it up in the hand. I have a poetical friend whose conversation is starred as thick with ifs as a boiled ham is with cloves. But another friend of mine, a business man, whom I trust in making my investments, would not let me meddle with a certain stock which I fancied, because, as he said, “there are too many ifs in it. As it looks now, I would n't touch it.”

I noticed, the other evening, that some private conversation was going on between the Counsellor and the two Annexes. There was a mischievous look about the little group, and I thought they were hatching some plot among them. I did not hear what the English Annex said, but the American girl's voice was sharper, and I overheard what sounded to me like, “It is time to stir up that young Doctor.” The Counsellor looked very knowing, and said that he would find a chance before long. I was rather amused to see how readily he entered into the project of the young people. The fact is, the Counsellor is young for his time of life; for he already betrays some signs of the change referred to in that once familiar street song, which my friend, the great American surgeon, inquired for at the music-shops under the title, as he got it from the Italian minstrel,

“Silva tredi mondi goo.”

I saw, soon after this, that the Counsellor was watching his chance to “stir up the young Doctor.”

It does not follow, because our young Doctor's bald spot is slower in coming than he could have wished, that he has not had time to form many sound conclusions in the calling to which he has devoted himself Vesalius, the father of modern descriptive anatomy, published his great work on that subject before he was thirty. Bichat, the great anatomist and physiologist, who died near the beginning of this century, published his treatise, which made a revolution in anatomy and pathology, at about the same age; dying soon after he had reached the age of thirty. So, possibly the Counsellor may find that he has “stirred up” a young man who, can take care of his own head, in case of aggressive movements in its direction.

“Well, Doctor,” the Counsellor began, “how are stocks in the measles market about these times? Any corner in bronchitis? Any syndicate in the vaccination business?” All this playfully.

“I can't say how it is with other people's patients; most of my families are doing very well without my help, at this time.”

“Do tell me, Doctor, how many families you own. I have heard it said that some of our fellow-citizens have two distinct families, but you speak as if you had a dozen.”

“I have, but not so large a number as I should like. I could take care of fifteen or twenty more without: having to work too hard.”

“Why, Doctor, you are as bad as a Mormon. What do you mean by calling certain families yours?”

“Don't you speak about my client? Don't your clients call you their lawyer? Does n't your baker, does n't your butcher, speak of the families he supplies as his families?”

“To be sure, yes, of course they do; but I had a notion that a man had as many doctors as he had organs to be doctored.”

“Well, there is some truth in that; but did you think the old-fashioned family doctor was extinct, a fossil like the megatherium?”

“Why, yes, after the recent experience of a friend of mine, I did begin to think that there would soon be no such personage left as that same old-fashioned family doctor. Shall I tell you what that experience was?”

The young Doctor said he should be mightily pleased to hear it. He was going to be one of those old-fogy practitioners himself.

“I don't know,” the Counsellor said, “whether my friend got all the professional terms of his story correctly, nor whether I have got them from him without making any mistakes; but if I do make blunders in some of the queer names, you can correct me. This is my friend's story:

“My family doctor,” he said, “was a very sensible man, educated at a school where they professed to teach all the specialties, but not confining himself to any one branch of medical practice. Surgical practice he did not profess to meddle with, and there were some classes of patients whom he was willing to leave to the female physician. But throughout the range of diseases not requiring exceptionally skilled manual interference, his education had authorized him to consider himself, and he did consider himself, qualified to undertake the treatment of all ordinary cases--It so happened that my young wife was one of those uneasy persons who are never long contented with their habitual comforts and blessings, but always trying to find something a little better, something newer, at any rate. I was getting to be near fifty years old, and it happened to me, as it not rarely does to people at about that time of life, that my hair began to fall out. I spoke of it to my doctor, who smiled, said it was a part of the process of reversed evolution, but might be retarded a little, and gave me a prescription. I did not find any great effect from it, and my wife would have me go to a noted dermatologist. The distinguished specialist examined my denuded scalp with great care. He looked at it through a strong magnifier. He examined the bulb of a fallen hair in a powerful microscope. He deliberated for a while, and then said, 'This is a case of alopecia. It may perhaps be partially remedied. I will give you a prescription.' Which he did, and told me to call again in a fortnight. At the end of three months I had called six times, and each time got a new recipe, and detected no difference in the course of my 'alopecia.' After I had got through my treatment, I showed my recipes to my family physician; and we found that three of them were the same he had used, familiar, old-fashioned remedies, and the others were taken from a list of new and little-tried prescriptions mentioned in one of the last medical journals, which was lying on the old doctor's table. I might as well have got no better under his charge, and should have got off much cheaper.

“The next trouble I had was a little redness of the eyes, for which my doctor gave me a wash; but my wife would have it that I must see an oculist. So I made four visits to an oculist, and at the last visit the redness was nearly gone,--as it ought to have been by that time. The specialist called my complaint conjunctivitis, but that did not make it feel any better nor get well any quicker. If I had had a cataract or any grave disease of the eye, requiring a nice operation on that delicate organ, of course I should have properly sought the aid of an expert, whose eye, hand, and judgment were trained to that special business; but in this case I don't doubt that my family doctor would have done just as well as the expert. However, I had to obey orders, and my wife would have it that I should entrust my precious person only to the most skilful specialist in each department of medical practice.

“In the course of the year I experienced a variety of slight indispositions. For these I was auriscoped by an aurist, laryngoscoped by a laryngologist, ausculted by a stethoscopist, and so on, until a complete inventory of my organs was made out, and I found that if I believed all these searching inquirers professed to have detected in my unfortunate person, I could repeat with too literal truth the words of the General Confession, 'And there is no health in us.' I never heard so many hard names in all my life. I proved to be the subject of a long catalogue of diseases, and what maladies I was not manifestly guilty of I was at least suspected of harboring. I was handed along all the way from alopecia, which used to be called baldness, to zoster, which used to be known as shingles. I was the patient of more than a dozen specialists. Very pleasant persons, many of them, but what a fuss they made about my trifling incommodities! 'Please look at that photograph. See if there is a minute elevation under one eye.'