Lydgate was late in setting out, but Dr. Sprague, the two other
surgeons, and several of the directors had arrived early; Mr.
Bulstrode, treasurer and chairman, being among those who were still
absent. The conversation seemed to imply that the issue was
problematical, and that a majority for Tyke was not so certain as had
been generally supposed. The two physicians, for a wonder, turned out
to be unanimous, or rather, though of different minds, they concurred
in action. Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty, was, as every one had
foreseen, an adherent of Mr. Farebrother. The Doctor was more than
suspected of having no religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated this
deficiency in him as if he had been a Lord Chancellor; indeed it is
probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the
world-old association of cleverness with the evil principle being still
potent in the minds even of lady-patients who had the strictest ideas
of frilling and sentiment. It was perhaps this negation in the Doctor
which made his neighbors call him hard-headed and dry-witted;
conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing of
judgments connected with drugs. At all events, it is certain that if
any medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of having
very definite religious views, of being given to prayer, and of
otherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a general
presumption against his medical skill.
On this ground it was (professionally speaking) fortunate for Dr.
Minchin that his religious sympathies were of a general kind, and such
as gave a distant medical sanction to all serious sentiment, whether of
Church or Dissent, rather than any adhesion to particular tenets. If
Mr. Bulstrode insisted, as he was apt to do, on the Lutheran doctrine
of justification, as that by which a Church must stand or fall, Dr.
Minchin in return was quite sure that man was not a mere machine or a
fortuitous conjunction of atoms; if Mrs. Wimple insisted on a
particular providence in relation to her stomach complaint, Dr. Minchin
for his part liked to keep the mental windows open and objected to
fixed limits; if the Unitarian brewer jested about the Athanasian
Creed, Dr. Minchin quoted Pope's "Essay on Man." He objected to the
rather free style of anecdote in which Dr. Sprague indulged, preferring
well-sanctioned quotations, and liking refinement of all kinds: it was
generally known that he had some kinship to a bishop, and sometimes
spent his holidays at "the palace."
Dr. Minchin was soft-handed, pale-complexioned, and of rounded outline,
not to be distinguished from a mild clergyman in appearance: whereas
Dr. Sprague was superfluously tall; his trousers got creased at the
knees, and showed an excess of boot at a time when straps seemed
necessary to any dignity of bearing; you heard him go in and out, and
up and down, as if he had come to see after the roofing. In short, he
had weight, and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw
it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and to
circumvent it. They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of
medical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contempt
for each other's skill. Regarding themselves as Middlemarch
institutions, they were ready to combine against all innovators, and
against non-professionals given to interference. On this ground they
were both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr.
Minchin had never been in open hostility with him, and never differed
from him without elaborate explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found
that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution. A layman who pried
into the professional conduct of medical men, and was always obtruding
his reforms,--though he was less directly embarrassing to the two
physicians than to the surgeon-apothecaries who attended paupers by
contract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril as
such; and Dr. Minchin shared fully in the new pique against Bulstrode,
excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lydgate. The
long-established practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller; were just
now standing apart and having a friendly colloquy, in which they agreed
that Lydgate was a jackanapes, just made to serve Bulstrode's purpose.
To non-medical friends they had already concurred in praising the other
young practitioner, who had come into the town on Mr. Peacock's
retirement without further recommendation than his own merits and such
argument for solid professional acquirement as might be gathered from
his having apparently wasted no time on other branches of knowledge.
It was clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast
imputations on his equals, and also to obscure the limit between his
own rank as a general practitioner and that of the physicians, who, in
the interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its various
grades,--especially against a man who had not been to either of the
English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedside
study there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience in
Edinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant indeed, but
hardly sound.