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 have been given to the heroic treatment,

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.




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