第33章

"On this subject of health we are much too ready to follow advice," Iagreed."A cousin of mine, Mrs.Wilkins, had a wife who suffered occasionally from headache.No medicine relieved her of them--not altogether.And one day by chance she met a friend who said: 'Come straight with me to Dr.Blank,' who happened to be a specialist famous for having invented a new disease that nobody until the year before had ever heard of.She accompanied her friend to Dr.Blank, and in less than ten minutes he had persuaded her that she had got this new disease, and got it badly; and that her only chance was to let him cut her open and have it out.She was a tolerably healthy woman, with the exception of these occasional headaches, but from what that specialist said it was doubtful whether she would get home alive, unless she let him operate on her then and there, and her friend, who appeared delighted, urged her not to commit suicide, as it were, by missing her turn.

"The result was she consented, and afterwards went home in a four-wheeled cab, and put herself to bed.Her husband, when he returned in the evening and was told, was furious.He said it was all humbug, and by this time she was ready to agree with him.He put on his hat, and started to give that specialist a bit of his mind.The specialist was out, and he had to bottle up his rage until the morning.By then, his wife now really ill for the first time in her life, his indignation had reached boiling point.He was at that specialist's door at half-past nine o clock.At half-past eleven he came back, also in a four-wheeled cab, and day and night nurses for both of them were wired for.He also, it appeared, had arrived at that specialist's door only just in time.

"There's this appendy--whatever they call it," commented Mrs.

Wilkins, "why a dozen years ago one poor creature out of ten thousand may possibly 'ave 'ad something wrong with 'is innards.To-day you ain't 'ardly considered respectable unless you've got it, or 'ave 'ad it.I 'ave no patience with their talk.To listen to some of them you'd think as Nature 'adn't made a man--not yet: would never understand the principle of the thing till some of these young chaps 'ad shown 'er 'ow to do it."[How to avoid Everything.]

"They have now discovered, Mrs.Wilkins," I said, "the germ of old age.They are going to inoculate us for it in early youth, with the result that the only chance of ever getting rid of our friends will be to give them a motor-car.And maybe it will not do to trust to that for long.They will discover that some men's tendency towards getting themselves into trouble is due to some sort of a germ.The man of the future, Mrs.Wilkins, will be inoculated against all chance of gas explosions, storms at sea, bad oysters, and thin ice.

Science may eventually discover the germ prompting to ill-assorted marriages, proneness to invest in the wrong stock, uncontrollable desire to recite poetry at evening parties.Religion, politics, education--all these things are so much wasted energy.To live happy and good for ever and ever, all we have to do is to hunt out these various germs and wring their necks for them--or whatever the proper treatment may be.Heaven, I gather from medical science, is merely a place that is free from germs.""We talk a lot about it," thought Mrs.Wilkins, "but it does not seem to me that we are very much better off than before we took to worrying ourselves for twenty-four 'ours a day about 'ow we are going to live.Lord! to read the advertisements in the papers you would think as 'ow flesh and blood was never intended to 'ave any natural ills.'Do you ever 'ave a pain in your back?' because, if so, there's a picture of a kind gent who's willing for one and sixpence halfpenny to take it quite away from you--make you look forward to scrubbing floors, and standing over the wash-tub six 'ours at a stretch like to a beanfeast.'Do you ever feel as though you don't want to get out of bed in the morning?' that's all to be cured by a bottle of their stuff--or two at the outside.Four children to keep, and a sick 'usband on your 'ands used to get me over it when I was younger.I used to fancy it was just because I was tired.

[The one Cure-All.]

"There's some of them seem to think," continued Mrs.Wilkins, "that if you don't get all you want out of this world, and ain't so 'appy as you've persuaded yourself you ought to be, that it's all because you ain't taking the right medicine.Appears to me there's only one doctor as can do for you, all the others talk as though they could, and 'e only comes to each of us once, and then 'e makes no charge."