efore, to hear from the house-surgeon, a
youngster who was not sorry to vex Minchin with impunity, exactly what
had occurred: he privately pronounced that it was indecent in a general
practitioner to contradict a physician's diagnosis in that open manner,
and afterwards agreed with Wrench that Lydgate was disagreeably
inattentive to etiquette. Lydgate did not make the affair a ground for
valuing himself or (very particularly) despising Minchin, such
rectification of misjudgments often happening among men of equal
qualifications. But report took up this amazing case of tumor, not
clearly distinguished from cancer, and considered the more awful for
being of the wandering sort; till much prejudice against Lydgate's
method as to drugs was overcome by the proof of his marvellous skill in
the speedy restoration of Nancy Nash after she had been rolling and
rolling in agonies from the presence of a tumor both hard and
obstinate, but nevertheless compelled to yield.

How could Lydgate help himself? It is offensive to tell a lady when
she is expressing her amazement at your skill, that she is altogether
mistaken and rather foolish in her amazement. And to have entered into
the nature of diseases would only have added to his breaches of medical
propriety. Thus he had to wince under a promise of success given by
that ignorant praise which misses every valid quality.

In the case of a more conspicuous patient, Mr. Borthrop Trumbull,
Lydgate was conscious of having shown himself something better than an
every-day doctor, though here too it was an equivocal advantage that he
won. The eloquent auctioneer was seized with pneumonia, and having
been a patient of Mr. Peacock's, sent for Lydgate, whom he had
expressed his intention to patronize. Mr Trumbull was a robust man, a
good subject for trying the expectant theory upon--watching the course
of an interesting disease when left as much as possible to itself, so
that the stages might be noted for future guidance; and from the air
with which he described his sensations Lydgate surmised that he would
like to be taken into his medical man's confidence, and be represented
as a partner in his own cure. The auctioneer heard, without much
surprise, that his was a constitution which (always with due watching)
might be left to itself, so as to offer a beautiful example of a
disease with all its phases seen in clear delineation, and that he
probably had the rare strength of mind voluntari