In Factory Towns, Where The Mechanics Have
Dispensaries And Employ Doctors, Something Of The Same Sort Of Story Has
Got About At The Present Day.
The women are constantly coming for physic,
and the assistants are stated to gravely measure a little peppermint and
colour it pink or yellow, which does as well.
Great invalids with long
pockets, who have paid their scores of guineas and gone the round of
fashionable physicians, do not seem to have received much more benefit
than if they had themselves chosen the yellow or pink hue of their tinted
water. It is wonderful what value the country poor set on a bottle of
physic; they are twice as grateful for it as for a good dinner. Some of
the doctors of old are said to have had an eye for an old book, or an old
clock, or an old bit of furniture or china in the cottage, and when the
patient was recovering they would take a fancy to it and buy it at their
own valuation, for of course the humble labourer was obliged to regard
such a wish as a command. The workhouse system puts the labourer
completely under the thumb of the clergyman and the doctor. It was in
this way that many good old pieces of work gradually found their
destination in great London collections. Once now and then, however, the
eager collector would come across some one independent, and meet with a
sharp refusal to part with the old china bowl.
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