Large Fees and How to Get Them: A book for the private use of physiciansHarmon, Albert V.
Science
Large Fees and How to Get Them: A book for the private use of physicians
Harmon, Albert V.
Medical fees
“Oh, no. I don’t care to dispose of them in that way.
It’s a case of all or none. I might better take a chance
on them all than to have the best culled out.”
It usually ends in the banker taking the entire lot at
10 per cent. He will collect every dollar on them, and
the doctor has got rid of a lot of paper on which he
would have hard work in getting half of its face value.
This plan seldom fails when carried out in the right
way.
There is one class of notes on which the signers rarely
make a contest. These are the ones given in payment
for sexual treatment. A physician is, as a rule, safe in
taking a note under these conditions as he can usually
collect the full amount. Men are delicate about this
trouble and don’t want their friends and neighbors to
know what they have been treated for. To resist payment
means a law suit in which the physician will go on
the stand and, under the questioning of his attorney,
bring out the fact that John Jones, the maker of the
note, gave it in payment of treatment for prostratitis, or
some other sexual ailment. Pressed for details he lays
bare the whole facts of the case to the intense mortification
of Jones.
The doctor, of course, could decline to answer such
questions on the ground that it would be a violation of
the confidence existing between a physician and his patient,
176but he doesn’t want to do so. He’s there to collect
that note, and in furtherance of this purpose he has
posted his attorney in advance as to the questions to be
asked.
Most men of sense know this and will pay their notes,
regardless of whether they have been helped or not,
rather than submit to the humiliation which they know
will be heaped on them when the doctor takes the stand.
The hardest notes to collect are those given in payment
for the treatment of ailments other than sexual disorders.
But even these, if made out in the manner outlined
in the opening part of this chapter, can be realized
on in full. Suppose a man living in Iowa gives a note
of this kind to a Chicago physician. The latter discounts
it immediately at his local bank which takes it, not because
the maker is known, but on account of the doctor’s
endorsement. Just before maturity the note is forwarded
to the maker’s local bank for collection. The
local banker notifies the maker that it holds the note,
which will be due on such a day. What does the maker
do? Why, he antes, of course. The note is in the hands
of his local banker, a person with whom he is anxious
to preserve his credit. In such a case, with the note
drawn to the order of the signer and endorsed by him,
there can be no plea of “no value received.” Besides,
the obligation is in the hands of an innocent holder before
maturity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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