ready to furnish. Then a shoemaker said, 'Hang your walls with new
boots.'

"Human nature is the same with medical specialists as it was with ancient
cordwainers, and it is too possible that a hungry practitioner may be
warped by his interest in fastening on a patient who, as he persuades
himself, comes under his medical jurisdiction. The specialist has but one
fang with which to seize and bold his prey, but that fang is a fearfully
long and sharp canine. Being confined to a narrow field of observation
and practice, he is apt to give much of his time to curious study, which
may be magnifique, but is not exactly la guerre against the patient's
malady. He divides and subdivides, and gets many varieties of diseases,
in most respects similar. These he equips with new names, and thus we
have those terrific nomenclatures which are enough to frighten the
medical student, to say nothing of the sufferers staggering under this
long catalogue of local infirmities. The 'old-fogy' doctor, who knows
the family tendencies of his patient, who 'understands his constitution,'
will often treat him better than the famous specialist, who sees him for
the first time, and has to guess at many things 'the old doctor' knows
from his previous experience with the same patient and the family to
which he belongs.

"It is a great luxury to practise as a specialist in almost any class of
diseases. The special practitioner has his own hours, hardly needs a
night-bell, can have his residence out of the town in which he exercises
his calling, in short, lives like a gentleman; while the hard-worked
general practitioner submits to a servitude more exacting than that of
the man who is employed in his stable or in his kitchen. That is the kind
of life I have made up my mind to."