Genre:

Essay

Subjects:

Population, Medical Practitioners, Status, Patronage, Pharmaceuticals

    Considers the 'desperate struggle for subsistence supposed peculiar to this high-pressure generation' (358), and suggests that the last resort of 'family charity is very much after the fashion of the new Poor Law; they will take you into the House, but fight against all out-door relief' (360). Recounts the case of 'my friend the doctor—Dr. Slop (we will call him)', who one day 'called together his butcher, his grocer, his daughter's schoolmistress, and other long-suffering creditors, and said, "My debts are 1,500l., my goods and chattels are assigned under a bill of sale, and if you put in an execution, a big white jar of leeches, with drugs and gallipots, are all you will get; but, per contra, I have a fluctuating estate in mumps, measles, and midwifery cases, that averages 800l. a year. But all this requires that I should still keep up appearances, and your security will vanish unless you leave me 600l. a year to go on with"' (358).