their own honesty, and that it might be worth some people's while

to show him up. Mr. Gambit, however, had a satisfactory practice,
much pervaded by the smells of retail trading which suggested

the reduction of cash payments to a balance. And he did not
think it worth his while to show Lydgate up until he knew how.

He had not indeed great resources of education, and had had to work
his own way against a good deal of professional" target="_blank" title="a.职业的 n.自由职业">professionalcontempt; but he made

none the worse accoucheur for calling the breathing apparatus "longs."
Other medical men felt themselves more capable. Mr. Toller shared the

highest practice in the town and belonged to an old Middlemarch family:
there were Tollers in the law and everything else above the line

of retail trade. Unlike our irascible friend Wrench, he had the
easiest way in the world of taking things which might be supposed

to annoy him, being a well-bred, quietly facetious man, who kept
a good house, was very fond of a little sporting when he could get it,

very friendly with Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr. Bulstrode.
It may seem odd that with such pleasant habits he should hare been

given to the heroictreatment, bleeding and blistering and starving
his patients, with a dispassionate disregard to his personal example;

but the incongruity favored the opinion of his ability among
his patients, who commonly observed that Mr. Toller had lazy manners,

but his treatment was as active as you could desire: no man,
said they, carried more seriousness into his profession: he was

a little slow in coming, but when he came, he DID something.
He was a great favorite in his own circle, and whatever he implied

to any one's disadvantage told doubly from his careless ironical tone.
He naturally got tired of smiling and saying, "Ah!" when he was told

that Mr. Peacock's successor did not mean to dispense medicines;
and Mr. Hackbutt one day mentioning it over the wine at a dinner-party,

Mr. Toller said, laughingly, "Dibbitts will get rid of his
stale drugs, then. I'm fond of little Dibbitts--I'm glad he's in luck."

"I see your meaning, Toller," said Mr. Hackbutt, "and I am entirely
of your opinion. I shall take an opportunity of expressing myself

to that effect. A medical man should be responsible for the
quality of the drugs consumed by his patients. That is the rationale

of the system of charging which has hitherto obtained;
and nothing is more offensive than this ostentation of reform,

where there is no real amelioration."
"Ostentation, Hackbutt?" said Mr. Toller, ironically. "I don't

see that. A man can't very well be ostentatious of what nobody
believes in. There's no reform in the matter: the question is,

whether the profit on the drugs is paid to the medical man by the
druggist or by the patient, and whether there shall be extra pay

under the name of attendance."
"Ah, to be sure; one of your damned new versions of old humbug,"

said Mr. Hawley, passing the decanter to Mr. Wrench.
Mr. Wrench, generally abstemious, often drank wine rather freely

at a party, getting the more irritable in consequence.
"As to humbug, Hawley," he said, "that's a word easy to fling about.

But what I contend against is the way medical men are fouling their
own nest, and setting up a cry about the country as if a general

practitioner who dispenses drugs couldn't be a gentleman. I throw
back the imputation with scorn. I say, the most ungentlemanly trick

a man can be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession
with innovations which are a libel on their time-honored procedure.

That is my opinion, and I am ready to maintain it against any one who
contradicts me." Mr. Wrench's voice had become exceedingly sharp.

"I can't oblige you there, Wrench," said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his
hands into his trouser-pockets.

"My dear fellow," said Mr. Toller, striking in pacifically! and
looking at Mr. Wrench, "the physicians have their toes trodden

on more than we have. If you come to dignity it is a question
for Minchin and Sprague."

"Does medical jurisprudence provide nothing against these infringements?"
said Mr. Hackbutt, with a disinterested desire to offer his lights.

"How does the law stand, eh, Hawley?"
"Nothing to be done there," said Mr. Hawley. "I looked into

it for Sprague. You'd only break your nose against a damned
judge's decision."

"Pooh! no need of law," said Mr. Toller. "So far as practice is
concerned the attempt is an absurdity. No patient will like it--

certainly not Peacock's, who have been used to depletion.
Pass the wine."

Mr. Toller's prediction was partly verified. If Mr. and Mrs. Mawmsey,
who had no idea of employing Lydgate, were made uneasy by his supposed

declaration against drugs, it was inevitable that those who called
him in should watch a little anxiously to see whether he did "use

all the means he might use" in the case. Even good Mr. Powderell,
who in his constantcharity of interpretation was inclined to

esteem Lydgate the more for what seemed a conscientious pursuit
of a better plan, had his mind disturbed with doubts during his

wife's attack of erysipelas, and could not abstain from mentioning
to Lydgate that Mr. Peacock on a similar occasion had administered

a series of boluses which were not otherwise definable than by their
remarkable effect in bringing Mrs. Powderell round before Michaelmas

from an illness which had begun in a remarkably hot August.
At last, indeed, in the conflict between his desire not to hurt

Lydgate and his anxiety that no "means" should be lacking,
he induced his wife privately to take Widgeon's Purifying Bills,

an esteemed Middlemarch medicine, which arrested every disease
at the fountain by setting to work at once upon the blood.

This co-operative measure was not to be mentioned to Lydgate,
and Mr. Powderell himself had no certain reliance on it,

only hoping that it might be attended with a blessing.
But in this doubtful stage of Lydgate's introduction he was helped

by what we mortals rashly call good fortune. I suppose no doctor ever
came newly to a place without making cures that surprised somebody--

cures which may be called fortune's testimonials, and deserve as
much credit as the ten or printed kind. Various patients got well

while Lydgate was attending them, some even of dangerous illnesses;
and it was remarked that the new doctor with his new ways had at

least the merit of bringing people back from the brink of death.
The trash talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate,

because it gave precisely the sort of prestige which an incompetent
and unscrupulous man would desire, and was sure to be imputed to him

by the simmering dislike of the other medical men as an encouragement
on his own part of ignorant puffing. But even his proud outspokenness

was checked by the discernment that it was as useless to fight
against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog;

and "good fortune" insisted on using those interpretations.
Mrs. Larcher having just become charitably concerned about alarming

symptoms in her charwoman, when Dr. Minchin called, asked him to see
her then and there, and to give her a certificate for the Infirmary;

whereupon after examination he wrote a statement of the case as one
of tumor, and recommended the bearer Nancy Nash as an out-patient. Nancy,

calling at home on her way to the Infirmary, allowed the stay maker
and his wife, in whose attic she lodged, to read Dr. Minchin's paper,

and by this means became a subject of compassionate conversation
in the neighboring shops of Churchyard Lane as being afflicted with

a tumor at first declared to be as large and hard as a duck's egg,
but later in the day to be about the size of "your fist."

Most hearers agreed that it would have to be cut out, but one had
known of oil and another of "squitchineal" as adequate to soften

and reduce any lump in the body when taken enough of into the inside--
the oil by gradually "soopling," the squitchineal by eating away.

Meanwhile when Nancy presented herself at the Infirmary, it happened
to be one of Lydgate's days there. After questioning and examining her,

Lydgate said to the house-surgeon in an undertone, "It's not tumor:
it's cramp." He ordered her a blister and some steel mixture,

and told her to go home and rest, giving her at the same time a note
to Mrs. Larcher, who, she said, was her best employer, to testify

that she was in need of good food.
But by-and-by Nancy, in her attic, became portentously worse,

the supposed tumor having indeed given way to the blister, but only
wandered to another region with angrier pain. The staymaker's wife

went to fetch Lydgate, and he continued for a fortnight to attend Nancy
in her own home, until under his treatment she got quite well and went

to work again. But the case continued to be described as one of tumor
in Churchyard Lane and other streets--nay, by Mrs. Larcher also;

for when Lydgate's remarkable cure was mentioned to Dr. Minchin,
he naturally did not like to say, "The case was not one of tumor,

and I was mistaken in describing it as such," but answered,
"Indeed! ah! I saw it was a surgical case, not of a fatal kind."

He had been inwardly annoyed, however, when he had asked at the
Infirmary about the woman he had recommended two days before,