Lydgate was late in setting out, but Dr. Sprague, the two other

surgeons, and several of the directors had arrived early; Mr.

Bulstrode, treasurer and chairman, being among those who were still

absent. The conversation seemed to imply that the issue was

problematical, and that a majority for Tyke was not so certain as had

been generally supposed. The two physicians, for a wonder, turned out

to be unanimous, or rather, though of different minds, they concurred

in action. Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty, was, as every one had

foreseen, an adherent of Mr. Farebrother. The Doctor was more than

suspected of having no religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated this

deficiency in him as if he had been a Lord Chancellor; indeed it is

probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the

world-old association of cleverness with the evil principle being still

potent in the minds even of lady-patients who had the strictest ideas

of frilling and sentiment. It was perhaps this negation in the Doctor

which made his neighbors call him hard-headed and dry-witted;

conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing of

judgments connected with drugs. At all events, it is certain that if

any medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of having

very definite religious views, of being given to prayer, and of

otherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a general

presumption against his medical skill.

On this ground it was (professionally speaking) fortunate for Dr.

Minchin that his religious sympathies were of a general kind, and such

as gave a distant medical sanction to all serious sentiment, whether of

Church or Dissent, rather than any adhesion to particular tenets. If

Mr. Bulstrode insisted, as he was apt to do, on the Lutheran doctrine

of justification, as that by which a Church must stand or fall, Dr.

Minchin in return was quite sure that man was not a mere machine or a

fortuitous conjunction of atoms; if Mrs. Wimple insisted on a

particular providence in relation to her stomach complaint, Dr. Minchin

for his part liked to keep the mental windows open and objected to

fixed limits; if the Unitarian brewer jested about the Athanasian

Creed, Dr. Minchin quoted Pope's "Essay on Man." He objected to the

rather free style of anecdote in which Dr. Sprague indulged, preferring

well-sanctioned quotations, and liking refinement of all kinds: it was

generally known that he had some kinship to a bishop, and sometimes

spent his holidays at "the palace."

Dr. Minchin was soft-handed, pale-complexioned, and of rounded outline,

not to be distinguished from a mild clergyman in appearance: whereas

Dr. Sprague was superfluously tall; his trousers got creased at the

knees, and showed an excess of boot at a time when straps seemed

necessary to any dignity of bearing; you heard him go in and out, and

up and down, as if he had come to see after the roofing. In short, he

had weight, and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw

it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and to

circumvent it. They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of

medical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contempt

for each other's skill. Regarding themselves as Middlemarch

institutions, they were ready to combine against all innovators, and

against non-professionals given to interference. On this ground they

were both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr.

Minchin had never been in open hostility with him, and never differed

from him without elaborate explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found

that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution. A layman who pried

into the professional conduct of medical men, and was always obtruding

his reforms,--though he was less directly embarrassing to the two

physicians than to the surgeon-apothecaries who attended paupers by

contract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril as

such; and Dr. Minchin shared fully in the new pique against Bulstrode,

excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lydgate. The

long-established practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller; were just

now standing apart and having a friendly colloquy, in which they agreed

that Lydgate was a jackanapes, just made to serve Bulstrode's purpose.

To non-medical friends they had already concurred in praising the other

young practitioner, who had come into the town on Mr. Peacock's

retirement without further recommendation than his own merits and such

argument for solid professional acquirement as might be gathered from

his having apparently wasted no time on other branches of knowledge.

It was clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast

imputations on his equals, and also to obscure the limit between his

own rank as a general practitioner and that of the physicians, who, in

the interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its various

grades,--especially against a man who had not been to either of the

English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedside

study there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience in

Edinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant indeed, but

hardly sound.




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