Good day to you! I trust you are well? Quite well?
Yes, you look very healthy, I must say. A pain in your left leg? Well, of
course, I’ll take a look at it – perhaps if I visit tomorrow morning?
Oh, yes, I’m fully qualified, and quite experienced. I
am a graduate of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and I studied medicine at
Edinburgh. Two years there, and I was apprenticed to Dr. Louden and Dr. Snow,
whose reputation you’ll know, no doubt.
Well, things are not too bad in Ballater. It’s not
like a town practice: not so much contagious disease, and those illnesses
connected with poverty, such as you might see in the Old Town tenements of
Edinburgh, are rare here. The village is regular and clean. The factors of the
various estates here see to it that pensioners are paid reasonably and the
estate houses are mostly well kept, and while I hear that the poors’ fund is
barely adequate there are some other trusts and so on that help those in need.
Of course there is a good deal of damp down by the river, where some houses –
including, I might say, the manse – have been built using clay and are examples
of very poor workmanship. But the air is remarkably healthy and of course there
are the spa waters. Chalybeate, yes – really quite rusty looking as they come
out of the earth, but they are very fine to drink, not like some of the more
sulphurous springs. And yes, it makes for a very varied and, at least in the
summer, quite prosperous practice. Just about enough for me to handle on my
own. It’s tempting to think of taking on a student, but of course that is not
so easily come about as it would be in a town with a university. I’d need to
find some young lad already in the parish, with ambitions, perhaps, to become a
physician, and the money to pay me until he goes to do some formal study. And
could we house him? I’m not sure we could fit him in. After all, we seem to
have developed quite a household staff! Not to mention the animals: I am sure all
kinds of creatures follow my wife Hippolyta about the village, waiting for a
moment when they can look neglected and she will take them in. Of course there
are the benefits of eggs and pork, and I have always been fond of a cat or two
about the place … and I have grown attached, I suppose, to the hen that favours
my study … It would have been helpful, perhaps, if we could have adopted a pony
that would listen to anyone apart from Hippolyta: I feel sometimes it detracts from
the dignity people seek in their physician to have his wife deliver him to
their houses. But then, the pony needs its exercise, and Hippolyta needs fresh
air, and it’s useful that she can drive safely to places to paint.
I’m prodigiously proud of her painting, you know. To
think that people want to buy pictures made by my wife! I know some men – and
women, too – think that a woman going into business is not fitting,
particularly a respectable gentlewoman like Hippolyta – like the wife of most
physicians. But painting is not quite business, after all: she is very
talented, and it is quite right that others should enjoy that and that she
should benefit from their enjoyment. And it does help, financially. I worry
lest some other doctor finds Ballater as congenial as I and sets up in
competition – would there be enough business for two medical men? It would be
so easy to be outdone. And medicine is such a chancy business, anyway: just one
mistake, or even one perceived mistake, and one’s reputation can be ruined.
What if I were to mis-set someone’s broken leg, and then find that no one
trusts me to tackle their gall stones? It’s a great worry.
If there is one lack in the village, it is another
professional man to talk with. The minister is a pleasant fellow, but rather
older than I and looking forward to the quiet life of retirement more than
keeping up to date with changes in the church. There is no Episcopal clergyman,
and those who fly in and take our services are so often in a rush to go on to
the next congregation. Since poor Mr. Strong’s death there is no man of law,
either. But when there is the opportunity, I find working with Mr. Durris, the
sheriff’s man, very interesting – he is clearly educated even if he is not very
forthcoming about his background - and after all, the patients he presents me
with are usually dead. I wonder if I should have stayed in Edinburgh and tried
for an anatomy instructor? Though pharmacy is fascinating, too: I do relish
having my own little workshop. But then what if one makes a mistake with that?
The consequences could be disastrous.
I shouldn’t like anyone to think that I was anxious
about my work. An anxious doctor does not give a patient confidence. And I
don’t like to think that Hippolyta thinks I worry overmuch: after all, a woman
should be able to rely on her husband to be strong and to support her and the
household. And really, it is only sometimes that I think ‘What if?’ or ‘I pray
I may not …’ And if it is not the middle of the night (and I generally do sleep
very well), then I can go and play my violin or the box piano, just softly, and
somehow my worries take the shape of the notes and seep gently into the air.
Mistakes barely matter there, with no one listening but the cats (though
sometimes one of them will give me a critical look if the bow slips), and I can
ease out of the heavy cloak of my anxieties and escape, free and content. Until
the next time.
