ore anything was known of
Lydgate's skill, the judgments on it had naturally been divided,
depending on a sense of likelihood, situated perhaps in the pit of the
stomach or in the pineal gland, and differing in its verdicts, but not
the less valuable as a guide in the total deficit of evidence.
Patients who had chronic diseases or whose lives had long been worn
threadbare, like old Featherstone's, had been at once inclined to try
him; also, many who did not like paying their doctor's bills, thought
agreeably of opening an account with a new doctor and sending for him
without stint if the children's temper wanted a dose, occasions when
the old practitioners were often crusty; and all persons thus inclined
to employ Lydgate held it likely that he was clever. Some considered
that he might do more than others "where there was liver;"--at least
there would be no harm in getting a few bottles of "stuff" from him,
since if these proved useless it would still be possible to return to
the Purifying Pills, which kept you alive if they did not remove the
yellowness. But these were people of minor importance. Good
Middlemarch families were of course not going to change their doctor
without reason shown; and everybody who had employed Mr. Peacock did
not feel obliged to accept a new man merely in the character of his
successor, objecting that he was "not likely to be equal to Peacock."

But Lydgate had not been long in the town before there were particulars
enough reported of him to breed much more specific expectations and to
intensify differences into partisanship; some of the particulars being
of that impressive order of which the significance is entirely hidden,
like a statistical amount without a standard of comparison, but with a
note of exclamation at the end. The cubic feet of oxygen yearly
swallowed by a full-grown man--what a shudder they might have created
in some Middlemarch circles! "Oxygen! nobody knows what that may
be--is it any wonder the cholera has got to Dantzic? And yet there are
people who say quarantine is no good!"

One of the facts quickly rumored was that Lydgate did not dispense
drugs. This was offensive both to the physicians whose exclusive
distinction seemed infringed on, and to the surgeon-apothecaries with
whom he ranged himself; and only a little while before, they might have
counted on having the law on their side against a man who without
calling himself a London-made M.D. dared to ask for