CHAPTER XIX.

TRIALS AND PLEASURES OF A MEDICAL LIFE, 404

Great mental and bodily toil. Irregularity of life. No command over time. Exposure to causes of disease. Physicians a short-lived class. Compensation generally small. Medicine not a money-making business. Less obligation felt by many to pay physician than to pay others. Physician often obliged to see the quack and hobby-rider getting rich by their impostures. Facility with which the people are imposed upon, a great trial to the honorable practitioner. Especially so when imposition is practised by his brethren. Valuable lives sacrificed to ignorance and unskilfulness. Witnessing sad scenes. Mutual sympathy and confidence add in such cases to physician’s sorrow. Irreligion and vice at hour of death. Frequency of sad scenes in times of pestilence. Ingratitude of those on whom the physician has conferred favors. Services of faithful physician not to be measured by pecuniary considerations. Dismissing physician for frivolous or improper reasons. Not so much gratitude in the world as commonly supposed. Virtuous and vicious poor. Clergymen generally attended upon gratuitously. What, therefore, is due from them to our profession. Conduct of some of them. Want of respect to the medical profession, on the part of the community generally. Public ingratitude. Pleasures of a medical life. Medicine as a science, full of interest. Its intimate union with other sciences. Enthusiasm in its pursuit. All discoveries, however small, add to the capabilities of the medical art in relieving misery and prolonging life. Pleasure in unraveling the perplexities of medical practice—in guiding and assisting Nature’s processes when salutary, and in arresting them when not so. Mental management of the sick. Results of practice of the judicious physician gratifying. The physician a hopeful, cheerful man. Gratification of his humanity and benevolence. His attachments. His social enjoyments. His opportunity for exerting a good moral influence.