Middlemarch

A panoramic chapter surveying the opposition to the New Fever Hospital from every social altitude, from the landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane to the polished dinner tables of the better-educated men. Mrs. Dollop of the Tankard is the most trenchant: she is "more and more convinced by her own asseveration, that Dr. Lydgate meant to let the people die in the Hospital, if not to poison them, for the sake of cutting them up without saying by your leave or with your leave." The Benefit Club at the Tankard had nearly voted to switch its medical man to Lydgate, but was deterred by members who felt that this power of resuscitating people "might interfere with providential favors." Lydgate's most damaging mistake is a conversation with Mr. Mawmsey, an important grocer and overseer — a man with a flame-like pyramid of hair and "cordial, encouraging" retail deference. Lydgate explains injudiciously to Mawmsey that not dispensing drugs is the honest course: "hard-working medical men may come to be almost as mischievous as quacks... 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." Mawmsey smiles, says nothing, and goes home to his wife — who relies on the pink mixture (not the brown) to get through Fair time. "Does this Mr. Lydgate mean to say there is no use in taking medicine?" By the next day, Mr. Gambit is told that Lydgate went about saying physic was of no use. At a dinner-party, Mr. Toller remarks sardonically that Dibbitts will get rid of his stale drugs now. Mr. Wrench becomes excitedly angry: "The most ungentlemanly trick a man can be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession with innovations which are a libel on their time-honored procedure." Mr. Toller counters coolly: "It's a question whether the profit on the drugs is paid to the medical man by the druggist or by the patient, and whether there shall be extra pay under the name of attendance." Hawley: "One of your damned new versions of old humbug." Two cases make Lydgate's name in distorted form. The first: Dr. Minchin diagnoses Nancy Nash, a charwoman, with tumor — "at first declared to be as large and hard as a duck's egg, but later in the day to be about the size of your fist." Lydgate examines her at the Infirmary and quietly tells the house-surgeon: "It's not tumor: it's cramp." He orders a blister and some steel mixture. The cramp duly wanders with angrier pain, then yields to Lydgate's fortnight of treatment. Nancy Nash returns to work. Minchin, when asked, does not admit to his misdiagnosis: "Indeed! ah! I saw it was a surgical case, not of a fatal kind." Meanwhile, the story in Churchyard Lane and beyond becomes the tale of a "tumor both hard and obstinate" that was compelled to yield to Lydgate's marvellous skill. The second: Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, the eloquent auctioneer, falls ill with pneumonia. Lydgate decides he is "a good subject for trying the expectant theory upon" — watching the disease run its course. He enlists Trumbull's willing participation by telling him he has "the rare strength of mind voluntarily to become the test of a rational procedure, and thus make the disorder of his pulmonary functions a general benefit to society." Trumbull acquiesces with magnificence, goes through the abstinence from drugs much sustained by the thermometer and the microscope and learning many new words, and recovers. He takes up the phrase "expectant method" as his own and spreads it generously. The medical community calls it crawling subservience to Bulstrode. Farebrother gives Lydgate two pieces of advice, which Lydgate receives more comfortably than he would have from anyone else. First: keep yourself as separable from Bulstrode as you can. Second: "take care not to get hampered about money matters... try and keep clear of wanting small sums that you haven't got." Lydgate notes inwardly that he has lately made some debts, but dismisses the thought: the furniture would not want renewing, nor the stock of wine for a long while. The chapter ends with one of the novel's most beautiful domestic scenes. Lydgate is stretched on the sofa, his head thrown back, hands clasped behind it, while Rosamond plays one tune after another at the piano. "There was something very fine in Lydgate's look just then, and any one might have been encouraged to bet on his achievement." He tells her about Vesalius — who could only learn anatomy by snatching bones from gallows and graveyards. Rosamond says, "I often wish you had not been a medical man." Lydgate replies: "It is the grandest profession in the world... to say that you love me without loving the medical man in me, is the same sort of thing as to say that you like eating a peach but don't like its flavor." Rosamond, dimpling: "Very well, Doctor Grave-face — I will declare in future that I dote on skeletons, and body-snatchers, and bits of things in phials, and quarrels with everybody, that end in your dying miserably."