He did not ask me anymore
questions about my hereditary predispositions on the paternal and
maternal sides. He did not examine me with the stethoscope or the
laryngoscope. He only strapped up my cut, and informed me that it would
speedily get well by the "first intention,"--an odd phrase enough, but
sounding much less formidable than cutis oenea.
I am afraid I have had something of the French prejudice which embodies
itself in the maxim "young surgeon, old physician." But a young
physician who has been taught by great masters of the profession, in
ample hospitals, starts in his profession knowing more than some old
doctors have learned in a lifetime. Give him a little time to get the
use of his wits in emergencies, and to know the little arts that do so
much for a patient's comfort,--just as you give a young sailor time to
get his sea-legs on and teach his stomach to behave itself,--and he will
do well enough.
The old Master knows ten times more about this matter and about all the
professions, as he does about everything else, than I do. My opinion is
that he has studied two, if not three, of these professions in a regular
course. I don't know that he has ever preached, except as Charles Lamb
said Coleridge always did, for when he gets the bit in his teeth he runs
away with the conversation, and if he only took a text his talk would be
a sermon; but if he has not preached, he has made a study of theology, as
many laymen do.
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