Down again she glided on its opposite side, her stern lifted high in the air. Ere her bowsprit pointed upward, a second wave arose, surpassing even the other, directly before her. Its curling summits reached her square sail-yard. Heavily pressed, she drove against it, but she rose not again. A cry of horror escaped Jessie's lips.

"Great Heavens!" exclaimed Captain Dalling," they are gone."

The mad waves leaped wildly as before, in triumph over the Daring and her bold crew. On seeing the dreadful catastrophe, the Rapid hauled her wind, and under close-reefed topsails, with the tide as it then was, she was able to weather the race. As soon as Captain Dalling and Jessie saw that she was in no further danger they returned home, and the same evening she anchored safely in Portland Roads.

Little more of our story remains to be told. Sir James Ousden never again appeared, and there was no doubt he was lost on board the Daring. Jessie's father recovered his property and reassumed his proper name; while she married the gallant Captain Hastings, who proved himself a true-hearted sailor to the last.

ON SEEING TWO SWALLOWS LATE IN OCTOBER.
BY JOSEPH ANTHONY, JUN.

139

THE DOCTOR.

(PROFESSIONAL MEN.-No. III.)

BY E. P. ROWSELL, ESQ.

WHEN one comes to think of it, it really does seem a very alarming thing to have the assistance of a doctor. Just for a moment contemplate this not at all uncommon case. The medical gentleman visits you daily, perchance, for a long time; he inflicts upon you all sorts of restrictions, he commands you to abstain from a number of agreeable things, and to take freely of a number of disagreeable things; he renders your life a nuisance and a burden; and then, when you are quite tired out, and you tell him so, and seem to say you'll meet your fate, or, at all events, won't have his aid in struggling against it any longer, then, he says, "perhaps you'd better have a second opinion;" and if you follow his advice, and obtain such second opinion, the chances are a thousand to one that, if there have been anything in your case the least out of the common way, any feature that is not as well known as the first letter in the alphabet, that that second opinion will be-that the first opinion was entirely wrong, and your present illness has mainly arisen from the bungling attempts to cure the slight indisposition that alone afflicted you at the outset. Now, I never could make this out. Is it a fact, that even at this day medical science is at such a low stage, that a vast number of disorders are yet but little known, their symptoms unlearned, and consequently their treatment a matter yet to be discovered? Is it a fact, that unless any ailment be a fever, the small-pox, or the measles, or some similarly common disorder, that I may call in a dozen ordinary doctors, and may hear different views, and receive different treatment from each? Is it really the case, that there is either so much difficulty in deciding the true nature of certain diseases, or so much variance in opinion as to their proper management, that one doctor may prescribe the very reverse of another doctor? It is no uncommon thing to hear a person say, "Mr. Brown orders me to live low;" well, he lives low accordingly, and takes a mere nothing. You meet that same person soon after, at Brighton, and, to your amazement (bearing in mind Mr. Brown's directions), you find him amusing himself with mutton chops and bottled porter. And why? because Mr. Jones, his medical attendant in the new locality, declares that he must live well; and straightway he feeds like an alderman. Well, he gets no better, so he resolves to come, to London and have the first advice. He comes, and visits Dr. Robinson, who unhesitatingly announces that both Jones and Brown have completely mistaken the case; that it really is a mercy that the patient has not died through their bungling; but he (Dr. R.) hopes, by entirely changing the plan of operations, that even yet the unfortunate individual, after a lengthened interval, may be restored to health.

This is a very unpleasant state of things; it is very disagreeable to think that my medical attendant may be as effectually preparing me for my coffin as though he were a hired assassin; and that my executors, when the business shall have been completed, will have to pay him a

handsome bill for killing me; and it does make one hesitate, if one be visited with any serious but not common malady, and one cannot afford the assistance of those more elevated professional men, who very seldom make mistakes, whether it were not better to let Nature alone and take one's chance.

Then (to increase our bewilderment) we have divers doctors who adhere to certain modes of treatment for all diseases, such as the hydropathic and homœopathic. The first, as we all know, attribute extraordinary virtues to cold water. They say, drink cold water, bathe in cold water, be wrapped in sheets saturated with cold water; always keep up a connexion with cold water in some way. It is to be hoped that, if the system be so beneficial, it is not so unpalatable as it would seem at first sight. The spectacle of an invalid lying wrapped in a great wet sheet on a frosty morning, and stimulating himself to endurance by copious draughts of water in which little bits of ice are floating, is not pleasant, and one hardly seems to care to try the system unless as a last resource. Then we have homœopathy, concerning which I must speak cautiously, for I know little about it; but in regard to the infinitesimal doses, and the giving as remedies those very things that in a healthy individual would induce the disease now sought to be cured, I own I must be viewed as somewhat incredulous. I am certainly sceptical as to the advantage homœopathy may bestow, and I believe that the merit of this system lies in its compelling its adherents to live carefully, to most rigidly observe the laws of Nature, and, in this way, I grant, to create for themselves a very excellent chance of restoration and recovery.

Now all this goes to the showing that we ought to have very clever men for doctors. Ordinary jog-trot, plodding individuals, who never would see anything for themselves, and who can hardly be made to see anything even when pointed out to them-these are not the men we want for physicians and surgeons. And we can quite dispense with West-end "exquisites," and gentlemen who are partial to the pulling off of knockers, making disturbances in theatres, and assaulting policemen. No man ought to be a doctor not possessing a very average, or something more than an average, share of ability. I grant you, a dull man may "get on" as a doctor, who would miserably fail as a barrister, and who should be (but is not, unfortunately, as yet) regarded as absolutely disqualified for the profession of the Church. Doctors' blunders are only occasionally discovered; and these blunders, as I have before said, seldom occur except in cases where the attendant is met by some feature that is more or less strange to him. The consequence is, that a man of pleasing appearance and address, who can say to his patients (especially the ladies) in the most gentlemanly manner a perfectly unlimited quantity of gentlemanlike things, and who has capital enough to take a nice house, in a good thoroughfare, and to place on his gate a bright brass plate, bearing his name at full length; and who, moreover, can keep a smart page, in a still smarter livery, the said page receiving strict injunctions to run breathless into the parish church every Sunday, and drag his master out of the most conspicuous place in the most conspicuous pew;—a man who can grasp all these points may do wonderfully well as a doctor, and may thrive like a sharp attorney, or a shrewd railway director.

I do not think, however, that a doctor's life can be a pleasant one.

Doubtless he gets used to its drawbacks, and they lose to him more or less of their disagreeable influence, but still, for it to be one's occupation day by day to go into and sit in close, darkened chambers, to gaze upon attenuated forms and wasted features; to feel pulses which indicate, mayhap, by their increasing feebleness, that they will beat but a little while longer; to listen to low moanings and bitter lamentation; to see the agonising fluctuations of hope and despair-oh! for this to be one's daily employment (and some cases presenting such painful aspects must always be under the charge of well-to-do medical men), is an idea one cannot make pleasing, even though one may struggle to remember, on the other hand, the gratification of often being the means of restoring to health, and the satisfaction of receiving for one's exertions large money recompense.

And there is another nuisance connected with the profession of a doctor, which might almost make a clever and anxious man drown himself in the water-butt. It is this. Say I am a medical man. I have been called in to a rather serious case. I have tended it for a long period with the utmost care; I have watched it with almost painful anxiety; I have employed upon it all my skill and acquirements, and at last I am rewarded. Having overcome many an obstacle, I am rejoiced to see clear and unmistakable signs of improvement; the disease has been in a great measure vanquished, and health is returning. The patient is recovering his spirits; his relatives, friends, and attendants are hopeful that he will soon be about again. I leave him, we will say, to-day, better than he has been yet; I begin to think he will hardly require my services much longerthe day after to-morrow, perhaps, I shall slacken in my attendance. Well, I go to-morrow, as usual, and the instant I knock the door is opened by a servant almost in tears. I go in, and straightway I am surrounded by a mob-a perfect mob of relatives, friends, attendants, sobbing hysterically. They are too overcome to answer my hurried inquiries, so, in alarm, I at once make my way to the sick man's chamber, and then, indeed, I see immediately that well might the mob weep, for here lies the sick man, not with every symptom of recovery as he appeared to me yesterday, but prostrate, stricken down, gone back again infinitely, astonishingly worse; so bad, that a very short examination tells me that the chances are now a thousand to one against his ultimate recovery. And oh! reader, if you knew the bitterness, the unutterable vexation, with which I subsequently learn that all this woful change, this miserable alteration has arisen purely and entirely from-what think you?-from there having been given to the patient, since yesterday, something that I had expressly forbidden as almost absolute poison; something that I had told the patient himself, told his friends, told his nurses, that he must NOT have in any case-and if you knew the increase of irritation caused by the unutterably stupid defence, that notwithstanding all I had said, they thought (as if they had the slightest right to think) that a little bit, "just a little bit" wouldn't hurt him, and so they gave it him-oh! if you could only conceive the overpowering emotions of indignation, disgust, contempt, and mortification which weigh me down at such a crisis, you would scarcely be surprised if you heard I had gone mad, and murdered patient, relatives, attendants, before 1 quitted the house.

And take another case. I am called in as a stranger; the people look doubtfully at me; they think, mayhap, I am too young for a doctor

(some persons think it impossible there can be wisdom anywhere except in an old head, and have a strange notion that clear symptoms of the approach of imbecility are undeniable evidences of excessive sageness); but, however, I am requested to exhibit my skill. I do my best, and my patient improves. But "patient" is a misnomer; he is one of the impatient class; he seems to have an idea that a doctor should be a magician; that he should prescribe a dose which should at once effect a cure; and if there be only a gradual recovery, he is dissatisfied. The patient, moreover, not knowing anything at all about the human frame, either in health or disease, is not conscious that I can see great improvement, although his feelings or appearance may have undergone little or no change and as he declines believing anything save what is evidence to him by his senses, this agreeable patient decides at once that he is no better, and that I have not done for him all that might have been done. Upon some pretext or other, therefore, I am got rid of, and there is called in, in all probability, a half or entire quack doctor, before whose awful eye, it is asserted, quails and vanishes every disease under the sun. Well, this empiric finds my patient's ailment under very peremptory orders of departure. I have, as it were, taken it by the shoulders, and got it half outside the door, and the door swinging-to will assuredly of itself complete the ejection. Now, the new doctor will most likely have the sense not to take any important step. He will be quite contented, in his ignorance, to let matters issue as they will. His professed remedies, therefore, will be utterly innocuous, at the same time that they will not work a fraction of good. But, reader-but, when the patient (thanks to my skill and assiduity-I say it boldly, thanks to my attentive watching and unwearied labour) finds himself, after a brief space (a brief space, after substituting for the dull plodder the clever quack), restored to health and strength-oh! how does that vile vagabond triumph!-how loudly does he claim a victory as much his as would be that of a man who should boast of having thrashed a noted pugilist, but who should not care to mention the trifling circumstance that he had set upon him only after another man had stunned him.

I have here incidentally mentioned quacks; quacks, however, of the higher class (if the distinction be not an absurdity), not the proper rascals who bring to fullest light the lamentable folly and weakness of human nature. Just a word regarding these. It is, I think, one of the most marvellous things possible, that people can be found so utterly weak and ridiculous as to credit for one instant a hundredth part of the monstrous assertions put forth in regard to certain quack medicines. Now, does anybody believe is it possible that anybody in this land can believe that a man afflicted with twenty ulcers in his leg-who has been ill for thirty years-who has suffered so much that he must be the most wonderful man ever heard of to have lived so long-and who, though he be but a poor man, living an immense way off, in some hamlet, the name of which has never reached the ears of any one, in London at all events, has nevertheless attracted so much attention from his most dismal and melancholy condition, that armies of doctors in country parts have marched to see him, and have had a firm fight with his several maladies, but have been worsted, and have retreated in despair-is it possible, I say, that anybody can credit that this poor, wretched, half-expiring creature, simply through following the