That same evening, while riding to a case in consultation with one of my surgeon friends, that gentleman said, “Oh, by the way, ——, I’m going to operate on Bird to-morrow for gall stones.” And so it proved. I sent Mr. Bird a bill for consultation and he replied that he owed me “nothing,” had “just made a friendly call,” etc. I finally threatened suit and he paid the bill grudgingly, and as insolently as he dared at long range. Let me assure 134the reader that that $25 was a sweeter morsel than ten times the amount from any other source. Oh, how it must have hurt my friend Bird! I trust he will be a mine of wealth to my surgical confrère—he has “gall” enough to run a stone quarry in his hepatic apparatus for a hundred years to come. Medical fees have not yet shaken off the incubus put on them by the dollar fee of the medical “daddies.” When the country was yet new, the fee question was practically settled by some of our medical pioneers, whose influence has never been dispelled. The one-dollar consultants were over-modest. We have always been ready to concede that such fees are an undervaluation of the consultant’s skill. The profession has ever refused to take some men at their own valuation—but it has suffered from the incubus just the same. Philanthropy has been advanced as an explanation of cheap fees. Quoth the experienced and distinguished low-priced man, “What would the poor people do if I made myself less accessible?” They would go around the corner to that young doctor whose shingle you see swinging to the breeze, and pay more money for better service than you or any living man can give for the fees you charge. In general, the public gets just about what it pays for, save where the matter is one of absolute charity or dead-beatism. What does a man study law for? In order that he may be able to practice successfully and make money. What does he study architecture or civil engineering, or any of the other professions for? Always with the one purpose of making money out of them. 135No, not always. Medicine is an exception. Judging by the ordinary standard of fees men study medicine in order that they may make an unappreciative public a present of their time and skill—at least most of them do. No fee within the range of the patient’s ability to pay is ever too great for medical services. The doctor is never in danger of being overpaid. He should “temper the wind to the shorn lamb,” but appearances are deceitful, and the doctor had best be in at the shearing, else there will be no wool for him. “Virtue is its own reward” may sound very pretty, but it is not consoling in view of the fact that it gets no other in this life and its reward in the world to come is rather problematic.