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brought an accession of business, so that, long before his death, his modest hopes were fully satisfied; for it was not in his nature to envy the patronage of older physicians now long established in the hearts of the people. Both his early and later friends concur in opinion that he never could have used any subtleties for the purpose of acquiring favor; they all aver that he was, in the highest degree, open, candid, honorable, generous; so that he might have said with the author of the Rambler—"I have seldom descended to the arts by which favor is obtained." Dr. West, who was his fellow student, and knew him intimately for twenty-four years, agrees with many others that a spirited independence was one of his striking characteristics. But this noble trait was so tempered with a modest respect for the opinions of others, as never to offend even the most sensitive arrogance.
If it ever happens that physicians advancing in age and rising to a lucrative practice, forget their poor friends who helped them to their early experience, Dr. P. was not guilty of this ingratitude. He not only attended faithfully many poor families who had long depended on his father for medical aid, but he gave much of his time to fresh accessions of this humble class, when his time was of great value; and the present writer has seen him treat them with the same kindness of manners and the same affectionate solicitude with which he treated those who were clothed in fine linen, and were fed sumptuously every day. This I have seen when he has come to my house, and requested my aid, where there could be no hope of compensation in the present world. He might without arrogance have justly hoped, with the good Sydenham, "that when his last day should come, there would be a ready witness in his heart, that he had attended all his patients of whatever condition with the utmost fidelity, and that he had treated them all precisely as he could wish to be treated himself."[1]
His sense of our duty with respect to poor people, is well expressed in the following extract from a report he wrote as chairman of a certain committee of the Philadelphia County Medical
- ↑ Sane cum supremus vitæ instabit dies, confido mihi adfuturum alacrem in præcordiis testem, me ægrorum omnium, cujuscunque demum sortis, summâ fide ac diligentiâ salutem procurasse, quorum interim nemo à me aliàs tractatus est quam ego memet tractari cuperem.—De Feb. Pestil. et Pest. annorum 1665 et 66, cap. ii.
