Among the evening magnates was a famous physician, who knew everybody,
and whom everybody knew. On entering at the door, he came upon Mr Merdle
drinking his tea in a corner, and touched him on the arm. Mr Merdle started. 'Oh! It's you!' 'Any better to-day?' 'No,' said Mr Merdle, 'I am no better.'
'A pity I didn't see you this morning. Pray come to me to-morrow, or let
me come to you.' 'Well!' he replied. 'I will come to-morrow as I drive by.' Bar and
Bishop had both been bystanders during this short dialogue, and as Mr
Merdle was swept away by the crowd, they made their remarks upon it
to the Physician. Bar said, there was a certain point of mental strain
beyond which no man could go; that the point varied with various
textures of brain and peculiarities of constitution, as he had had
occasion to notice in several of his learned brothers; but the point of
endurance passed by a line's breadth, depression and dyspepsia ensued.
Not to intrude on the sacred mysteries of medicine, he took it, now
(with the jury droop and persuasive eye-glass), that this was Merdle's
case?
Bishop said that when he was a young man, and had fallen for a
brief space into the habit of writing sermons on Saturdays, a habit
which all young sons of the church should sedulously avoid, he had
frequently been sensible of a depression, arising as he supposed from an
over-taxed intellect, upon which the yolk of a new-laid egg, beaten up
by the good woman in whose house he at that time lodged, with a glass
of sound sherry, nutmeg, and powdered sugar acted like a charm. Without
presuming to offer so simple a remedy to the consideration of so
profound a professor of the great healing art, he would venture to
inquire whether the strain, being by way of intricate calculations,
the spirits might not (humanly speaking) be restored to their tone by a
gentle and yet generous stimulant?
'Yes,' said the physician, 'yes, you are both right. But I may as well
tell you that I can find nothing the matter with Mr Merdle. He has
the constitution of a rhinoceros, the digestion of an ostrich, and
the concentration of an oyster. As to nerves, Mr Merdle is of a cool
temperament, and not a sensitive man: is about as invulnerable, I should
say, as Achilles. How such a man should suppose himself unwell without
reason, you may think strange. But I have found nothing the matter with
him. He may have some deep-seated recondite complaint. I can't say. I
only say, that at present I have not found it out.'