"Good day to you, Mr. Bouvart; I feel quite in spirits, and think my fever has left me." "I am sure it has," replied Bouvart, dryly. "The very first expression you used convinced me of it." "Pray, explain yourself." "Nothing is easier. In the first days of your illness, when your life was in danger, I was your _dearest friend_; as you began to get better, I was your _good Bouvart_; and now I am Mr. Bouvart: depend upon it you are quite recovered." In fact, the affection of a patient for his physician is very like the love a candidate for a borough has for an individual elector--he is very grateful to him, till he has got all he wants out of him. The medical practitioner is unwise not to recognize this fact. Common prudence enjoins him to act as much as possible on the maxim of "accipe dum dolet"--"take your fee while your patient is in pain." But though physicians have always held themselves open to take as much as they can get, their ordinary remuneration has been fixed in divers times by custom, according to the locality of their practice, the rank of their patients, the nature of the particular services rendered, and such other circumstances. In China the rule is "no cure, no pay," save at the Imperial court, where the physicians have salaries that are cut off during the continuance of royal indisposition. For their sakes it is to be hoped that the Emperor is a temperate man, and does not follow the example of George the Fourth, who used to drink Maraschino between midnight and four o'clock in the morning; and then, when he awoke with a furred tongue, from disturbed sleep, used to put himself under the hands of his doctors. Formerly the medical officers of the English monarch were paid by salary, though doubtless they were offered, and were not too proud to accept, fees as well. Coursus de Gungeland, Edward the Third's apothecary, had a pension of sixpence a-day--a considerable sum at that time; and Ricardus Wye, the surgeon of the same king, had twelve-pence a day, and eight marks per annum. "Duodecim denarios per diem, et octo marcas per annum, pro vadiis suis pro vitâ." In the royal courts of Wales, also, the fees of surgeons and physicians were fixed by law--a surgeon receiving, as payment for curing a slight wound, only the blood-stained garments of the injured person; but for healing a dangerous wound he had the bloody apparel, his board and lodging during the time his services were required, and one hundred and eighty pence.