Clergymen and Doctors: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches.Anonymous
History
Clergymen and Doctors: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches.
Anonymous
Clergy; Medicine -- Anecdotes; Medicine -- Humor; Pastoral theology -- Anecdotes; Physicians
Dimsdale--a Hertfordshire physician--who, in 1768, travelled to St.
Petersburg to inoculate her and her son, a Baron of the Empire; and
presented him with a fee of £12,000, and a life pension of £500. This
sum of £12,000 is about the largest ever paid, in ancient times or
modern, to one physician for one operation; although there are living
surgeons who from private individuals have received fees that dwarf
this imperial largess into comparative insignificance. Perhaps even
more remarkable, however, than Catherine's liberal payment for good
work, was the Emperor Joseph of Austria's reward for bad news. On his
deathbed his Majesty asked Quarin his opinion of his case, and was
frankly assured, in reply, that he could not expect to live other
forty-eight hours. For this uncourtly but really kind affirmation of
the truth, the Emperor created Quarin a Baron, and conferred on him an
income of £2000. Louis XIV. gave his physician and surgeon 75,000
crowns each, after the successful performance of a painful, and at that
time novel, operation. Beside this, the fees paid by Napoleon I. to the
Faculty who attended Marie Louise in March 1811, when the Emperor's son
was born, are trifling. Dubois, Corvisart, Bourdier, and Ivan, had
amongst them a remuneration of £4000, £2000 being the portion assigned
to Dubois.
_Fee for a Political Consultation._--At the outbreak of the American
war, Grenville was desirous to ascertain what was the state of feeling
that prevailed among the Quaker colonists in America; and he could hit,
as he thought, on no more effectual means of doing this, than by a
conversation with Dr. Fothergill, who was a Quaker, and enjoyed the
hearty confidence of his brethren of that sect. Fothergill was
accordingly summoned to prescribe for the statesman--who, in reality,
wanted to feel, through him, the pulse of transatlantic Quakerism; and
the visit, of course, was made to take the turn of a vivacious
controversy on American politics. At the end, Grenville put five
guineas into the doctor's hand, and said to him, "Really, I feel so
much better, that I don't think it is necessary for you to prescribe."
With a shrewd smile, Fothergill, keeping a good hold of the money,
said, "Well, at this rate, friend, I can spare thee an hour now and
then."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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