Dr. Chesterfield's letters to his son on medicine as a career / by Sir William B. Dalby.

  • William Bartlett Dalby
Date:
[between 1880 and 1889?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Chesterfield's letters to his son on medicine as a career / by Sir William B. Dalby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    a year, and be described to all the friends and acquaintances of their distinguished circle as being 'quite charming' and 'so kind.' You will have occasion to call in frequently a consultant, and you will be very careful to always select the very best of them, for you cannot afford to have a second-rate one. If you are ever foolish enough to commit this mistake, your patient will after- wards blame you and consult on his own account some better known professor. No wonder that you will make a good income; for if once the people ' in society' (as the cant phrase goes) take you up, they will talk about you and never let their ailing friends rest until they have sent for you. When they do, they will find you a very agreeable creature as well as a very good doctor. Bear in mind it is a very hard life. Except for a couple of hours or so when you see a few patients at home, you will be driving about till dinner-time, and even afterwards you may have to go out and see some serious cases. But you will be well paid for it, and with the exception of a very few physicians and surgeons, will make more in twenty-five years than a dozen of them put together. You may have a large family, but, except in your six weeks' autumn holiday, you will have very little time to see them. You perceive now the kind of position you will occupy as the representative of the best sort of doctor, who not only is a well-educated, agreeable creature, but knows his business exceedingly well, and lives on pleasant terms with his professional brethren. You will also have a feeling of security and independence, and so be quite above the little jealousies which are a source of great discomfort to some others who are not of quite such a good class. This division is immensely annoyed if their patients leave them for a time and consult some one else, for they regard their patients as a sort of personal property in whom they have a kind of proprietary interest that must not be disturbed by any other doctor. In short, they consider him to be a form of poacher. You, however, will not care twopence for the so-termed poacher, for you will believe this to be a free country in which anyone can employ whom they please. Much as I dislike didactic advice, I feel constrained for once to give you a golden rule. It is never to speak ill of any of your fraternity, whatever you may think. You will do yourself no good, and it will only be thought that you are jealous. Now I wish you to be, as well as to be known to be, quite above jealousy. You don't expect every lawyer to be a good one; why should you be surprised that all doctors are not intelligent angels ? There
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