Of all types or professions that came here, I think he disliked doctors
most. The reason was of course that the work they did or were about to
do in the world bordered on that which he was trying to accomplish, and
the chances were that they sniffed at or at least critically examined
what he was doing with an eye to finding its weak spots. In many cases
no doubt he fancied that they were there to study and copy his methods
and ideas, without having the decency later on to attribute their
knowledge to him. It was short shrift for any one of them with ideas or
"notions" unfriendly to him advanced in his presence. For a little while
during my stay there was a smooth-faced, rather solid physically and
decidedly self-opinionated mentally, doctor who ate at the same small
table as I and who was never tired of airing his views, medical and
otherwise. He confided to me rather loftily that there was, to be sure,
something to Culhane's views and methods but that they were
"over-emphasized here, over-emphasized." Still, one could over-emphasize
the value of drugs too. As for himself he had decided to achieve a happy
medium if possible, and for this reason (for one) he had come here to
study Culhane.
As for Culhane, in spite of the young doctor's condescension and
understanding, or perhaps better yet because of it, he thoroughly
disliked, barely tolerated, him, and was never tired of commenting on
little dancing medics with their "pill cases" and easily acquired book
knowledge, boasting of their supposed learning "which somebody else had
paid for," as he once said--their fathers, of course. And when they were
sick, some of them at least, they had to come out here to him, or they
came to steal his theory and start a shabby grafting sanitarium of their
own. He knew them.
One noon we were at lunch. Occasionally before seating himself at his
small central table he would walk or glance about and, having good eyes,
would spy some little defect or delinquency somewhere and of course
immediately act upon it. One of the rules of the repair shop was that
you were to eat what was put before you, especially when it differed
from what your table companion received. Thus a fat man at a table with
a lean one might receive a small portion of lean meat, no potatoes and
no bread or one little roll, whereas his lean acquaintance opposite
would be receiving a large portion of fat meat, a baked or boiled
potato, plenty of bread and butter, and possibly a side dish of some
kind. Now it might well be, as indeed was often the case, that each
would be dissatisfied with his apportionment and would attempt to change
plates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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