If a surgeon has performed an operation which might have been useful but has merely failed in the event, he is nevertheless, entitled to charge; but, if it could not have been useful in any event, he will have no claim on the patient [29]. A medical man who has made a patient undergo a course of treatment which plainly could be of no service, cannot make it a subject of charge; but an apothecary who has simply administered medicines under the direction of a physician may recover for the same, however improper they may have been [30]. If the physician has employed the ordinary degree of skill required of one in his profession, and has applied remedies fitted to the complaint and calculated to do good in general, he is entitled to his fees, although he may have failed in this particular instance, such failure being then attributable to some vice or peculiarity in the constitution of the patient, for which the medical man is not responsible [31]. It is the duty of a physician who is attending a patient infected with a contagious disease, when called upon to attend others not so infected, to take all such precautionary means experience has proved to be necessary to prevent its communication to them. When a physician who was told by a patient not to attend any infected with small-pox or his services would be dispensed with, failed to say that he was attending such a patient, and |22| promised not to do so, but continued to attend, and did by want of proper care communicate small-pox to the plaintiff and his family, it was held that these facts were proper evidence to go to the jury in reduction of damages in an action for his account, and that the physician was responsible in damages for the suffering, loss of time and damage to which the plaintiff may have been subjected. If a physician by communicating an infectious disease has rendered a prolonged attendance necessary, thereby increasing his bill, he cannot recover for such additional services necessitated by his own want of care [32]. This rule will apply with equal force to puerperal fever [33]. In the case of vaccination, the physician, while he does not guarantee the specific value of the vaccine virus, yet guarantees its freshness; so that if he inoculate a patient with virus in an altered state, constituting as it then would mere putrid animal matter, and erysipelas or any injury to any limb necessitating amputation should arise, he will undoubtedly be held responsible for the suffering, loss of time, and permanent injury to the patient [34]. Long since Lord Kenyon was of the opinion that if a surgeon was sent for to extract a thorn, which might be pulled out with a pair of nippers, and through his misconduct it became necessary to amputate the limb, the surgeon could not come into a court of justice to recover fees for the cure of the wound which he himself had caused [35].