Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The club surgeon / [Charles Dickens]. 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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![{Conducted by take the TVoodman’s Club ? Because I wroited thirty pounds n year; because I wanted and liked work too, feeling pleasure— as only the dullest surgeons do not—in the active exercise of my profession, and because I hoped thereby to increase my knowledge, my power, and my connection. When I had a Dispensary and other Clubs added to the parish, why did I endeavour to do all that work single-lianded ] Because I had not at that time so much private practice as enabled me to pay the cost of an assistant. It is not pure labour that the country apothecary spends upon his parish and his Clubs. They oblige him to run up a heavy drug bill, to buy expensive instruments, and to keep a horse. The drug bill of a young country surgeon who has parish work and Clubs, with very little private practice, easily reaches fifty pounds a year ; and if he has no friend from whom to borrow instruments, the cost of them is serious. He must be prepared to meet every emergency and to perform any operation. He cannot send, as he would in London, for assistance from the hospitals ; and though he may send for any surgeon in his neighbourhood by way of consultation, to advise with him, or take part in the respon- sibility of any obviously active measure, yet the performance of the active measure must be by himself. When he transfers the duty to a rival, he confesses his inferior ability, and transfers to the prompter man his patient’s confidence. The country surgeon, if he would act for himself, and incur no risk of figuring un- pleasantly at inquests, must have at hand every instrument which, like the stomach-pump, maybe demanded suddenly, and must purchase others as they are called into request. If he has much poor practice, and nobody to borrow from during his first years, while he can least afford any expense, the call for one instrument after another will be tolerably brisk. In the first quarter of my attendance on the Ancient Woodmen,! spent all the quarter’s money profit on an instrument required for the performance on a Club member of an operation not likely to be called for half-a- dozen times in a long course of practice. I had a broken leg two or three miles away in one direction, and a fever case requiring for some time daily attention two or three miles off in another. In addition to the cases of average slightness furnished by my Club, I was summoned to some dozen members who had nothing particularly the matter with them, and who only sent for their doctor on some trivial errand, because they had nothing to pay for his attendance. All this time the followers of Parkinson were on the watch to register against me cases of neglect. Of course they would and did occur ; but as like cases were common to every surgeon in the parish, they were easily attributed to the general carelessness of medical men in their attendance upon the poor. They did me no harm ; but as hlidsummer, and the great annual Club day and Club dinner drew near, I was warned that a hostile motion was on foot, that Beerleyites and Parkinsonites were forming a coalition, and that my ownites could not maintain me in my place if I did not wipe a certain stain out of my cliaracter. That stain was Pride ; inasmuch as the opposing faction, led by mine host of the Thistle, averred that it was very ungracious in me never to have come down to the monthly meetings to take my glass of beer with the assembled brethren. I was too proud to associate with working men. I was indeed spending my life among them and upon them, but the main point was the glass of beer. Besides, my pride was well enough known, for I had missed the annual dinner at another of my Clubs, and had put upon it the indignity of sending an apprentice, a mere boy, who could not carve a sausage. I was warned, there- fore, by friendly Woodmen, that whatever I might think about the best employment of my time, if I did not go to the Woodman’s dinner, I should in all probability get notice of dismissal from the Woodman’s Club. I revoked therefore my tacit intention to pay for the dinner, and abstain from eating it. True it is that the eating and smelling of a quantity of hot meat, and the breathing of tobacco smoke, in the middle of a hot work- ing-day in July, can be considered only as a serious infliction ; but I dared not trifle with my character. Already the growth of my private practice had been seriously retarded by my unprofessional conduct in not wearing a beaver hat. Subject to much physical fa- tigue, and liable to headache, I had found hats a source of torment, and wore therefore, in spite of much scandal, a light fur cap in winter^ and in summer a straw hat, using Leghorn in deference to public notions of respectability. The want of a black hat retarded the growth of my private practice very seriously. A very lady-like individual, wife of a small grocer,. Mrs. Evans, frequently declared that “ she had heard me to be clever, and would have sent for me in her late illness, but she could not think of having a doctor come to her house in a cap, it was so very unusual.” As I really could not give in on the hat question, it was a lucky day for me when I afterwards bethought myself of making up for the loose style of dress upon my head, by being very stifl’ about the neck. I took to the wearing of white neckcloths with the happiest efi’ect. Every- body thought of the Church; I looked so good and correct in a clean white neckcloth, that I drew a tooth for Mrs. Evans in the second week of it. My practice rose steadily from that date, and in popularity I became a rival even to the rector. What I should have done, if I had effected a crisis by repenting of my fur and straw, and resolving to wear a good hat for the remainder of my days, and be at peace with all men, I don’t know. Hats I continue to abominate.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22465972_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
