Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,188 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works.

Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,188 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works.

—­I should be sorry to lose my confidence in Dr. B. Franklin, who seems very much devoted to his business, and whom I mean to consult about some small symptoms I have had lately.  Perhaps it is coming to a new boarding-house.  The young people who come into Paris from the provinces are very apt—­so I have been told by one that knows—­to have an attack of typhoid fever a few weeks or months after their arrival.  I have not been long enough at this table to get well acclimated; perhaps that is it.  Boarding-House Fever.  Something like horse-ail, very likely,—­horses get it, you know, when they are brought to city stables.  A little “off my feed,” as Hiram Woodruff would say.  A queer discoloration about my forehead.  Query, a bump?  Cannot remember any.  Might have got it against bedpost or something while asleep.  Very unpleasant to look so.  I wonder how my portrait would look, if anybody should take it now!  I hope not quite so badly as one I saw the other day, which I took for the end man of the Ethiopian Serenaders, or some traveller who had been exploring the sources of the Niger, until I read the name at the bottom and found it was a face I knew as well as my own.

I must consult somebody, and it is nothing more than fair to give our young Doctor a chance.  Here goes for Dr. Benjamin Franklin.

The young Doctor has a very small office and a very large sign, with a transparency at night big enough for an oyster-shop.  These young doctors are particularly strong, as I understand, on what they call diagnosis,—­an excellent branch of the healing art, full of satisfaction to the curious practitioner, who likes to give the right Latin name to one’s complaint; not quite so satisfactory to the patient, as it is not so very much pleasanter to be bitten by a dog with a collar round his neck telling you that he is called Snap or Teaser, than by a dog without a collar.  Sometimes, in fact, one would a little rather not know the exact name of his complaint, as if he does he is pretty sure to look it out in a medical dictionary, and then if he reads, This terrible disease is attended with vast suffering and is inevitably mortal, or any such statement, it is apt to affect him unpleasantly.

I confess to a little shakiness when I knocked at Dr. Benjamin’s office door.  “Come in!” exclaimed Dr. B. F. in tones that sounded ominous and sepulchral.  And I went in.

I don’t believe the chambers of the Inquisition ever presented a more alarming array of implements for extracting a confession, than our young Doctor’s office did of instruments to make nature tell what was the matter with a poor body.

There were Ophthalmoscopes and Rhinoscopes and Otoscopes and Laryngoscopes and Stethoscopes; and Thermometers and Spirometers and Dynamometers and Sphygmometers and Pleximeters; and Probes and Probangs and all sorts of frightful inquisitive exploring contrivances; and scales to weigh you in, and tests and balances and pumps and electro-magnets and magneto-electric machines; in short, apparatus for doing everything but turn you inside out.

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