Didactic fiction; Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
Such was the end of this present interview, so little to the content
of Booth, that he was heartily concerned he had ever mentioned a
syllable of the matter to his honourable friend.
[This chapter occurs in the original edition of _Amelia,_ between 1
and 2. It is omitted later, and would have been omitted here but for
an accident. As it had been printed it may as well appear: for though
it has no great value it may interest some readers as an additional
illustration of Fielding's dislike to doctors.--ED.
_Containing a brace of doctors and much physical matter._
He now returned with all his uneasiness to Amelia, whom he found in a
condition very little adapted to relieve or comfort him. That poor
woman was now indeed under very great apprehensions for her child,
whose fever now began to rage very violently: and what was worse, an
apothecary had been with her, and frightened her almost out of her
wits. He had indeed represented the case of the child to be very
desperate, and had prevailed on the mother to call in the assistance
of a doctor.
Booth had been a very little time in the room before this doctor
arrived, with the apothecary close at his heels, and both approached
the bed, where the former felt the pulse of the sick, and performed
several other physical ceremonies.
He then began to enquire of the apothecary what he had already done
for the patient; all which, as soon as informed, he greatly approved.
The doctor then sat down, called for a pen and ink, filled a whole
side of a sheet of paper with physic, then took a guinea, and took his
leave; the apothecary waiting upon him downstairs, as he had attended
him up.
All that night both Amelia and Booth sat up with their child, who
rather grew worse than better. In the morning Mrs. Ellison found the
infant in a raging fever, burning hot, and very light-headed, and the
mother under the highest dejection; for the distemper had not given
the least ground to all the efforts of the apothecary and doctor, but
seemed to defy their utmost power, with all that tremendous apparatus
of phials and gallypots, which were arranged in battle-array all over
the room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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