Other medical men felt themselves more capable. Mr. Toller shared the
highest practice in the town and belonged to an old Middlemarch family:
there were Tollers in the law and everything else above the line of
retail trade. Unlike our irascible friend Wrench, he had the easiest
way in the world of taking things which might be supposed to annoy him,
being a well-bred, quietly facetious man, who kept a good house, was
very fond of a little sporting when he could get it, very friendly with
Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr. Bulstrode. It may seem odd that with
such pleasant habits he should have been given to the heroic treatment,
bleeding and blistering and starving his patients, with a dispassionate
disregard to his personal example; but the incongruity favored the
opinion of his ability among his patients, who commonly observed that
Mr. Toller had lazy manners, but his treatment was as active as you
could desire: no man, said they, carried more seriousness into his
profession: he was a little slow in coming, but when he came, he _did_
something. He was a great favorite in his own circle, and whatever he
implied to any one's disadvantage told doubly from his careless
ironical tone.
He naturally got tired of smiling and saying, "Ah!" when he was told
that Mr. Peacock's successor did not mean to dispense medicines; and
Mr. Hackbutt one day mentioning it over the wine at a dinner-party, Mr.
Toller said, laughingly, "Dibbitts will get rid of his stale drugs,
then. I'm fond of little Dibbitts--I'm glad he's in luck."
"I see your meaning, Toller," said Mr. Hackbutt, "and I am entirely of
your opinion. I shall take an opportunity of expressing myself to that
effect. A medical man should be responsible for the quality of the
drugs consumed by his patients. That is the rationale of the system of
charging which has hitherto obtained; and nothing is more offensive
than this ostentation of reform, where there is no real amelioration."
"Ostentation, Hackbutt?" said Mr. Toller, ironically. "I don't see
that. A man can't very well be ostentatious of what nobody believes
in. There's no reform in the matter: the question is, whether the
profit on the drugs is paid to the medical man by the druggist or by
the patient, and whether there shall be extra pay under the name of
attendance."
"Ah, to be sure; one of your damned new versions of old humbug," said
Mr. Hawley, passing the decanter to Mr. Wrench.
Mr. Wrench, generally abstemious, often drank wine rather freely at a
party, getting the more irritable in consequence.
"As to humbug, Hawley," he said, "that's a word easy to fling about.
But what I contend against is the way medical men are fouling their own
nest, and setting up a cry about the country as if a general
practitioner who dispenses drugs couldn't be a gentleman. I throw back
the imputation with scorn. I say, the most ungentlemanly trick a man
can be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession with
innovations which are a libel on their time-honored procedure. That is
my opinion, and I am ready to maintain it against any one who
contradicts me." Mr. Wrench's voice had become exceedingly sharp.