There was an immediate refusal on the part of every medical man in the town to become a visitor at the Fever Hospital.

“Very well,” said Lydgate to Mr. Bulstrode, “we have a capital house-surgeon and dispenser, a clear-headed, neat-handed fellow; we’ll get Webbe from Crabsley, as good a country practitioner as any of them, to come over twice a-week, and in case of any exceptional operation, Protheroe will come from Brassing.  I must work the harder, that’s all, and I have given up my post at the Infirmary.  The plan will flourish in spite of them, and then they’ll be glad to come in.  Things can’t last as they are:  there must be all sorts of reform soon, and then young fellows may be glad to come and study here.”  Lydgate was in high spirits.

“I shall not flinch, you may depend upon it, Mr. Lydgate,” said Mr. Bulstrode.  “While I see you carrying out high intentions with vigor, you shall have my unfailing support.  And I have humble confidence that the blessing which has hitherto attended my efforts against the spirit of evil in this town will not be withdrawn.  Suitable directors to assist me I have no doubt of securing.  Mr. Brooke of Tipton has already given me his concurrence, and a pledge to contribute yearly:  he has not specified the sum—­ probably not a great one.  But he will be a useful member of the board.”

A useful member was perhaps to be defined as one who would originate nothing, and always vote with Mr. Bulstrode.

The medical aversion to Lydgate was hardly disguised now.  Neither Dr. Sprague nor Dr. Minchin said that he disliked Lydgate’s knowledge, or his disposition to improve treatment:  what they disliked was his arrogance, which nobody felt to be altogether deniable.  They implied that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless innovation for the sake of noise and show which was the essence of the charlatan.

The word charlatan once thrown on the air could not be let drop.  In those days the world was agitated about the wondrous doings of Mr. St. John Long, “noblemen and gentlemen” attesting his extraction of a fluid like mercury from the temples of a patient.

Mr. Toller remarked one day, smilingly, to Mrs. Taft, that “Bulstrode had found a man to suit him in Lydgate; a charlatan in religion is sure to like other sorts of charlatans.”

“Yes, indeed, I can imagine,” said Mrs. Taft, keeping the number of thirty stitches carefully in her mind all the while; “there are so many of that sort.  I remember Mr. Cheshire, with his irons, trying to make people straight when the Almighty had made them crooked.”

“No, no,” said Mr. Toller, “Cheshire was all right—­all fair and above board.  But there’s St. John Long—­that’s the kind of fellow we call a charlatan, advertising cures in ways nobody knows anything about:  a fellow who wants to make a noise by pretending to go deeper than other people.  The other day he was pretending to tap a man’s brain and get quicksilver out of it.”