"I am quite pleased with your protege," she said to Mr. Brooke before
going away.
"My protege?--dear me!--who is that?" said Mr. Brooke.
"This young Lydgate, the new doctor. He seems to me to understand his
profession admirably."
"Oh, Lydgate! he is not my protege, you know; only I knew an uncle of
his who sent me a letter about him. However, I think he is likely to
be first-rate--has studied in Paris, knew Broussais; has ideas, you
know--wants to raise the profession."
"Lydgate has lots of ideas, quite new, about ventilation and diet, that
sort of thing," resumed Mr. Brooke, after he had handed out Lady
Chettam, and had returned to be civil to a group of Middlemarchers.
"Hang it, do you think that is quite sound?--upsetting The old
treatment, which has made Englishmen what they are?" said Mr. Standish.
"Medical knowledge is at a low ebb among us," said Mr. Bulstrode, who
spoke in a subdued tone, and had rather a sickly air. "I, for my part,
hail the advent of Mr. Lydgate. I hope to find good reason for
confiding the new hospital to his management."
"That is all very fine," replied Mr. Standish, who was not fond of Mr.
Bulstrode; "if you like him to try experiments on your hospital
patients, and kill a few people for charity I have no objection. But I
am not going to hand money out of my purse to have experiments tried on
me. I like treatment that has been tested a little."
"Well, you know, Standish, every dose you take is an experiment-an
experiment, you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards the lawyer.
"Oh, if you talk in that sense!" said Mr. Standish, with as much
disgust at such non-legal quibbling as a man can well betray towards a
valuable client.
"I should be glad of any treatment that would cure me without reducing
me to a skeleton, like poor Grainger," said Mr. Vincy, the mayor, a
florid man, who would have served for a study of flesh in striking
contrast with the Franciscan tints of Mr. Bulstrode. "It's an
uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the
shafts of disease, as somebody said,--and I think it a very good
expression myself."
Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing. He had quitted the party
early, and would have thought it altogether tedious but for the novelty
of certain introductions, especially the introduction to Miss Brooke,
whose youthful bloom, with her approaching marriage to that faded
scholar, and her interest in matters socially useful, gave her the
piquancy of an unusual combination.