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far from well. Having obtained leave of absence from my principal, I
started by the next train, seriously anxious about my friend. Mrs.
Crabbe met me at the station. She told me Tom was getting very
much broken down by continued anxiety; the expenses of keeping up
his establishment were heavy, and patients were few and far between.
He wished my advice and knowledge of practical work to guide him
in his crisis.
I certainly found Crabbe altered very much for the worse. He
looked gaunt and cadaverous, and much of his old reckless
joyousness had left him, though he brightened up wonderfully on
seeing an old friend.
After dinner the three of us held a solemn council of war, in
which he laid before me all his difficulties. “What in the world am I
to do, Barton? ” he said. "If I could make myself known it would be
all right, but no one seems to look at my door-plate, and the place is
overstocked with doctors. I believe they think I am a D. D. I wouldn't
mind if these other fellows were good men, but they are not. They are
all antiquated old fogies at least half, a century behind the day. Now
there is old Markham, who lives in that brick house over there and
does most of the practice in the town. I'll swear he doesn't know the
difference between locomotor ataxia and a hypodermic syringe, but
he is known, so they flock into his surgery in a manner which is
simply repulsive. And Davidson down the road, he is only an L. S. A.
Talked about epispastic paralysis at the Society the other night —
confused it with liquor, epispasticus, you know. Yet that fellow
makes a pound to my shilling.
"Get your name known and write," said I.
"But what on earth am I to write about?' asked Crabbe. 'If a
man has no cases, how in the world is he to describe them? Help
yourself and pass the bottle.
“Couldn't you invent a case just to raise the wind?”
“Not a bad idea,' said Crabbe thoughtfully. 'By the way, did
you see my "Discopherous Bone in a Duck's Stomach?»
“Yes; it seemed rather good.”
“Good, I believe you! Why man, it was a domino which the old
duck had managed to gorge itself with. It was a perfect godsend.
Then I wrote about embryology of fishes because I knew nothing
about it and reasoned that ninety-nine men in a hundred would be in