"What line shall you take, then?" said Mr. Chichely, the coroner,
a great coursing comrade of Mr. Vincy's.
"Oh, I'm precious glad I'm not one of the Directors now.
I shall vote for referring the matter to the Directors and the
Medical Board together. I shall roll some of my responsibility
on your shoulders, Doctor," said Mr. Vincy, glancing first at
Dr. Sprague, the senior physician of the town, and then at
Lydgate who sat opposite. "You medical gentlemen must consult
which sort of black draught you will prescribe, eh, Mr. Lydgate?"
"I know little of either," said Lydgate; "but in general,
appointments are apt to be made too much a question of personal liking.
The fittest man for a particular post is not always the best
fellow or the most agreeable. Sometimes, if you wanted to get
a reform, your only way would be to pension off the good fellows
whom everybody is fond of, and put them out of the question."
Dr. Sprague, who was considered the physician of most "weight,"
though Dr. Minchin was usually said to have more "penetration,"
divested his large heavy face of all expression, and looked
at his wine-glass while Lydgate was speaking. Whatever was not
problematical and suspected about this young man--for example,
a certain showiness as to foreign ideas, and a disposition
to unsettle what had been settled and forgotten by his elders--
was positively unwelcome to a physician whose standing had been fixed
thirty years before by a treatise on Meningitis, of which at least
one copy marked "own" was bound in calf.
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