Laying a Ghost.
"
T is of no use for you to talk, Mary," I said, quite angrily; "a professional man has no right to sit still taking his patients' fees without constantly striving after higher knowledge for their benefit."
"Of course not, dear," said my wife, gently—by the way, she always does speak gently—"but you study too much."
"Nonsense!"
"Indeed, dear, but you do. Your forehead is growing full of lines, and your hair is turning quite grey."
"All the better. People do not like young-looking doctors."
"But you do work too hard, dear."
"Absurd! I feel as if I must be a mere idler, Mary; and at a time, too, when it seems as if medicine was quite at a stand. Surgery has made wonderful strides, but the physician is nowhere."
"What nonsense, dear, when everybody says that you are the cleverest doctor for fifty miles round; and at such times I feel as if I could kiss the person who said so."
"'Everybody' is a goose; and, goose or no, don't you let me catch you kissing them. There, be off, little one, and let me get on with my work."
"Work, work, always work," she said, with a pretty pout of the lips which invited what they received, with the result that my happy young wife went out smiling while I sat down to think.
"My happy young wife went out smiling."
I was young and very enthusiastic in those days. Rather vain, too, and disposed to look down upon what I called the "old fogies of the profession." I meant to make great discoveries in medicine for the benefit of suffering humanity, and for my own benefit too, I'm afraid. Consequently—I confess it—I was a dangerous kind of doctor, and always itching to try experiments.
At the time of which I am speaking, I was mad upon a new remedy which I believed I had discovered for the nervous state consequent upon the failure of the digestive powers in people of middle age; and it was upon this remedy that I now sat down to think in my little consulting-room and dispensary combined.
I had been pondering over the subject then for months, and the more I thought the more convinced I was that my remedy would work wonders, but for want of test cases I was completely in the dark. I had got so far, though, that I had given myself full confidence in the correctness of my deductions; all I wanted was trial—experiment on the vile body of man, so as to make sure.
