The pertinacity with which the members of the medical profession cling to the shilling of "the guinea" is amusing. When Erskine used to order "The Devil's Own" to _charge_, he would cry out "Six-and-eightpence!" instead of the ordinary word of command. Had his Lordship been colonel of a volunteer corps of physicians, he would have roused them to an onward march by "A guinea!" Sometimes patients object to pay the extra shilling over the sovereign, not less than their medical advisers insist on having it. "We surgeons do things by guineas," we recollect a veteran hospital surgeon saying to a visitor who had put down the largest current gold piece of our present coinage. The patient (an irritable old gentleman) made it a question of principle; he hated humbug--he regarded "that shilling" as sheer humbug, and he would not pay it. A contest ensued, which terminated in the eccentric patient paying, not the shilling, but an additional sovereign. And to this day he is a frequent visitor of our surgical ally, and is well content to pay his two sovereigns, though he would die rather than countenance "a sham" by putting down "a guinea." But of all the stories told of surgeons who have grown fat at the expense of the public, the best is the following one, for which Mr. Alexander Kellet, who died at his lodgings in Bath, in the year 1788 is our authority. A certain French surgeon residing in Georgia was taken prisoner by some Indians, who having acquired from the French the art of larding their provisions, determined to lard this particular Frenchman, and then roast him alive. During the culinary process, when the man was half larded, the operators were surprised by the enemy, and their victim, making his escape, lived many days in the woods on the bacon he had in his skin. If full reliance may be placed on the following humorous verses, it is not unknown for a physician to be paid in commodities, without the intervention of the circulating medium, or the receipt of such creature comforts as Johnson's friendly apothecary was wont to accept in lieu of cash:-- "An adept in the sister arts, Painter, poet, and musician, Employ'd a doctor of all parts, Druggist, surgeon, and physician. "The artist with M.D. agrees, If he'd attend him when he grew sick, Fully to liquidate his fees With painting, poetry, and music. "The druggist, surgeon, and physician, So often physick'd, bled, prescribed, That painter, poet, and musician (Alas! poor artist!) sunk--and died. "But ere death's stroke, 'Doctor,' cried he, 'In honour of your skill and charge, Accept from my professions three-- A _hatchment_, _epitaph_, and _dirge_.'" A double fee for good news has long been a rule in the profession. A father just presented with an heir, or a lucky fellow just made one, is expected to bleed freely for the benefit of the Faculty.