Mawmsey, an important grocer in the Top Market, who,
though not one of his patients, questioned him in an affable manner
on the subject, he was injudicious enough to give a hasty popular
explanation of his reasons, pointing out to Mr. Mawmsey that it
must lower the character of practitioners, and be a constant injury
to the public, if their only mode of getting paid for their work
was by their making out long bills for draughts, boluses, and mixtures.
"It is in that way that hard-working medical men may come to be almost
as mischievous as quacks," said Lydgate, rather thoughtlessly.
"To get their own bread they must overdose the king's lieges;
and that's a bad sort of treason, Mr. Mawmsey--undermines the
constitution in a fatal way."
Mr. Mawmsey was not only an overseer (it was about a question of
outdoor pay that he was having an interview with Lydgate), he was
also asthmatic and had an increasing family: thus, from a medical
point of view, as well as from his own, he was an important man;
indeed, an exceptional grocer, whose hair was arranged in a
flame-like pyramid, and whose retail deference was of the cordial,
encouraging kind--jocosely complimentary, and with a certain
considerate abstinence from letting out the full force of his mind.
It was Mr. Mawmsey's friendly jocoseness in questioning him which
had set the tone of Lydgate's reply.
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