Still I didn't start out to write up either Cheyenne or Greeley. I
intended to mention casually Dr. Law, of the latter place, who acted as my
physician for a few months and coaxed me back from the great hereafter. I
had been under the hands of a physician just before, who was also coroner,
and who, I found afterward, was trying to treat me professionally as long
as the lamp held out to burn, intending afterward to sit upon me
officially. He had treated me professionally until he was about ready to
summon his favorite coroner's jury. Then I got irritated and left the
county of his jurisdiction.
Learning that Dr. Law was relying solely on the practice of medicine for a
livelihood, I summoned him, and after explaining the great danger that
stood in the way of harmonizing the practice of medicine and the official
work of the inquest business, I asked him if he had any business
connection with any undertaking establishment or _hic jacet_ business, and
learning from him that he had none, I engaged him to solder up my
vertebrae and reorganize my spinal duplex.
Sometimes it isn't entirely the medicine you swallow that paralyzes pain
so much as it is the quiet magnetism of a good story and the snap of a
pleasant eye. I had one physician who tried to look joyous when he came
into the room, but he generally asked me to run my tongue out till he
could see where it was tied on, then he would feel my pulse with his cold
finger and time it with a $6 watch, and after that he would write a new
prescription for horse medicine and heave a sigh, look at me as he might
if it had been the last time he ever expected to see me on earth, and then
he would sigh and go away. When he came back he generally looked shocked
and grieved to find me alive. This was the _pro tem_ physician and
_ex-officio_ coroner. I always felt as though I ought to apologize to him
for clinging to life so, when no doubt he had the jury in the hall waiting
to “view” me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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