I wonder how many men remember Tom Waterhouse Crabbe, student of medicine in this city. He was a man whom it was not easy to forget if you had once come across him. Geniuses are more commonly read about than seen, but one could not speak five minutes with Crabbe without recognising that he had inherited some touch of that subtle, indefinable essence. There was a bold originality in his thought, and a convincing earnestness in his mode of expressing it, which pointed to something higher than mere cleverness. He studied spasmodically and irregularly, yet he was one of the first men--certainly the most independent thinker--of his year. Poor Crabbe--there was something delightfully original even in his mistakes. I can remember how he laboriously explained to his examiner that the Spanish fly _grew_ in Spain. And how he gave five drops of Sabin oil credit for producing that state which it is usually believed to rectify.
Crabbe was not at all the type of man whom we usually a.s.sociate with the word "genius." He was not pale nor thin, neither was his hair of abnormal growth. On the contrary he was a powerfully built, square-shouldered fellow, full of vitality, with a voice like a bull and a laugh that could be heard across the meadows. A muscular Christian too, and one of the best Rugby forwards in Edinburgh.
I remember my first meeting with Crabbe. It gave me a respect both for his cool reasoning powers and for his courage. It was at one of the Bulgarian Atrocity meetings held in Edinburgh in "78. The hall was densely packed and the ventilation defective, so that I was not sorry to find that owing to my lateness I was unable to get any place, and had to stand in the doorway. Leaning against the wall there I could both enjoy the cool air and hear the invectives which speaker after speaker was hurling at the Conservative ministry. The audience seemed enthusiastically unanimous. A burst of cheering hailed every argument and sarcasm. There was not one dissentient voice. The speaker paused to moisten his lips, and there was a silence over the hall. Then a clear voice rose from the middle of it: "All very fine, but what did Gladstone----" There was a howl of execration and yells of "Turn him out!" But the voice was still audible. "What did Gladstone do in "63?"
it demanded. "Turn him out. Show him out of the window! Put him out!"
There was a perfect hurricane of threats and abuse. Men sprang upon the benches shaking their sticks and peering over each other"s shoulders to get a glimpse of the daring Conservative. "What did Gladstone do in "63?" roared the voice; "I insist upon being answered." There was another howl of execration, a great swaying of the crowd, and an eddy in the middle of it. Then the ma.s.s of people parted and a man was borne out kicking and striking, and after a desperate resistance was precipitated down the stairs.
As the meeting became somewhat monotonous after this little divertis.e.m.e.nt, I went down into the street to cool myself. There was my inquisitive friend leaning up against a lamp-post with his coat torn to shreds and a pipe in his mouth. Recognising him by his cut as being a medical student, I took advantage of the freemasonry which exists between members of that profession.
"Excuse me," I said, "you are a medical, aren"t you?"
"Yes," he said; "Thomas Crabbe, a "Varsity man."
"My name is Barton," I said. "Pardon my curiosity, but would you mind telling me what Gladstone _did_ do in "63?"
"My dear chap," said Crabbe, taking my arm and marching up the street with me, "I haven"t the remotest idea in the world. You see, I was confoundedly hot and I wanted a smoke, and there seemed no chance of getting out, for I was jammed up right in the middle of the hall, so I thought I"d just make them carry me out; and I did--not a bad idea, was it? If you have nothing better to do, come up to my digs and have some supper."
"Certainly," said I; and that was the foundation of my friendship with Thomas Crabbe.
Crabbe took his degree a year before I did, and went down to a large port in England with the intention of setting up there. A brilliant career seemed to lie before him, for besides his deep knowledge of medicine, acquired in the most practical school in the world, he had that indescribable manner which gains a patient"s confidence at once. It is curious how seldom the two are united. That charming doctor, my dear madam, who pulled the young Charley through the measles so nicely, and had such a pleasant manner and such a clever face, was a noted duffer at college and the laughing-stock of his year. While poor little Doctor Grinder whom you snubbed so, and who seemed so nervous and didn"t know where to put his hands, he won a gold medal for original research and was as good a man as his professors. After all, it is generally the outside case, not the inside works, which is noticed in this world.
Crabbe went down with his young degree, and a still younger wife, to settle in this town, which we will call Brisport. I was acting as a.s.sistant to a medical man in Manchester, and heard little from my former friend, save that he had set up in considerable style, and was making a bid for a high-cla.s.s practice at once. I read one most deep and erudite paper in a medical journal, ent.i.tled "Curious Development of a Discopherous Bone in the Stomach of a Duck," which emanated from his pen, but beyond this and some remarks on the embryology of fishes he seemed strangely quiet.
One day to my surprise I received a telegram from Mrs. Crabbe begging me to run down to Brisport and see her husband, as he was far from well.
Having obtained leave of absence from my princ.i.p.al, I started by the next train, seriously anxious about my friend. Mrs. Crabbe met me at the station. She told me Tom was getting very much broken down by continued anxiety; the expenses of keeping up his establishment were heavy, and patients were few and far between. He wished my advice and knowledge of practical work to guide him in this crisis.
I certainly found Crabbe altered very much for the worse. He looked gaunt and cadaverous, and much of his old reckless joyousness had left him, though he brightened up wonderfully on seeing an old friend.
After dinner the three of us held a solemn council of war, in which he laid before me all his difficulties. "What in the world am I to do, Barton?" he said. "If I could make myself known it would be all right, but no one seems to look at my door-plate, and the place is overstocked with doctors. I believe they think I am a D.D. I wouldn"t mind if these other fellows were good men, but they are not. They are all antiquated old fogies at least half a century behind the day. Now there is old Markham, who lives in that brick house over there and does most of the practice in the town. I"ll swear he doesn"t know the difference between locomotor ataxia and a hypodermic syringe, but he is known, so they flock into his surgery in a manner which is simply repulsive. And Davidson down the road, he is only an L.S.A. Talked about epispastic paralysis at the Society the other night--confused it with liquor epispasticus, you know. Yet that fellow makes a pound to my shilling."
"Get your name known and write," said I.
"But what on earth am I to write about?" asked Crabbe. "If a man has no cases, how in the world is he to describe them? Help yourself and pa.s.s the bottle."
"Couldn"t you invent a case just to raise the wind?"
"Not a bad idea," said Crabbe thoughtfully. "By the way, did you see my "Discopherous Bone in a Duck"s Stomach"?"
"Yes; it seemed rather good."
"Good, I believe you! Why, man, it was a domino which the old duck had managed to gorge itself with. It was a perfect G.o.dsend. Then I wrote about embryology of fishes because I knew nothing about it and reasoned that ninety-nine men in a hundred would be in the same boat. But as to inventing whole cases, it seems rather daring, does it not?"
"A desperate disease needs desperate remedies," said I. "You remember old Hobson at college. He writes once a year to the British Medical and asks if any correspondent can tell him how much it costs to keep a horse in the country. And then he signs himself in the Medical Register as "The contributor of several unostentatious queries and remarks to scientific papers!""
It was quite a treat to hear Crabbe laugh with his old student guffaw.
"Well, old man," he said, "we"ll talk it over to-morrow. We mustn"t be selfish and forget that you are a visitor here. Come along out, and see the beauties (save the mark!) of Brisport." So saying he donned a funereal coat, a pair of spectacles, and a hat with a desponding brim, and we spent the remainder of the evening roaming about and discussing mind and matter.
We had another council of war next day. It was a Sunday, and as we sat in the window, smoking our pipes and watching the crowded street, we brooded over many plans for gaining notoriety.
"I"ve done Bob Sawyer"s dodge," said Tom despondingly. "I never go to church without rushing out in the middle of the sermon, but no one knows who I am, so it is no good. I had a nice slide in front of the door last winter for three weeks, and used to give it a polish up after dusk every night. But there was only one man ever fell on it, and he actually limped right across the road to Markham"s surgery. Wasn"t that hard lines?"
"Very hard indeed," said I.
"Something might be done with orange peel," continued Tom, "but it looks so awfully bad to have the whole pavement yellow with peel in front of a doctor"s house."
"It certainly does," I agreed.
"There was one fellow came in with a cut head one night," said Tom, "and I sewed him up, but he had forgotten his purse. He came back in a week to have the st.i.tches taken out, but without the money. That man is going about to this day, Jack, with half a yard of my catgut in him--and in him it"ll stay until I see the coin."
"Couldn"t we get up some incident," said I, "which would bring your name really prominently before the public?"
"My dear fellow, that"s exactly what I want. If I could get my name into the _Brisport Chronicle_ it would be worth five hundred a year to me.
There"s a family connection, you know, and people only want to realise that I am here. But how am I to do it unless by brawling in the street or by increasing my family? Now, there was the excitement about the discopherous bone. If Huxley or some of these fellows had taken the matter up it might have been the making of me. But they took it all in with a disgusting complacency as if it was the most usual thing in the world and dominoes were the normal food of ducks. I"ll tell you what I"ll do," he continued, moodily eyeing his fowls. "I"ll puncture the floors of their fourth ventricles and present them to Markham. You know that makes them ravenous, and they"d eat him out of house and home in time. Eh, Jack?"
"Look here, Thomas," said I, "you want your name in the papers--is that it?"
"That"s about the state of the case."
"Well, by Jove, you shall have it."
"Eh? Why? How?"
"There"s a pretty considerable crowd of people outside, isn"t there, Tom?" I continued. "They are coming out of church, aren"t they? If there was an accident now it would make some noise."
"I say, you"re not going to let rip among them with a shot gun, are you, in order to found a practice for me?"
"No, not exactly. But how would this read in tomorrow"s _Chronicle_?--"Painful occurrence in George Street.--As the congregation were leaving George Street Cathedral after the morning service, they were horrified to see a handsome, fashionably dressed gentleman stagger and fall senseless upon the pavement. He was taken up and carried writhing in terrible convulsions into the surgery of the well-known pract.i.tioner Doctor Crabbe, who had been promptly upon the spot. We are happy to state that the fit rapidly pa.s.sed off, and that, owing to the skilful attention which he received, the gentleman, who is a distinguished visitor in our city, was able to regain his hotel and is now rapidly becoming convalescent." How would that do, eh?"
"Splendid, Jack--splendid!"
"Well, my boy, I"m your fashionably dressed stranger, and I promise you they won"t carry me into Markham"s."
"My dear fellow, you are a treasure--you won"t mind my bleeding you?"
"Bleeding me, confound you! Yes, I do very much mind."
"Just opening a little vein," pleaded Tom.
"Not a capillary," said I. "Now, look here; I"ll throw up the whole business unless you give me your word to behave yourself. I don"t draw the line at brandy."
"Very well, brandy be it," grumbled Tom.
"Well, I"m off," said I. "I"ll go into the fit against your garden gate."
"All right, old man."
"By the way, what sort of a fit would you like? I could give you either an epileptic or an apoplectic easily, but perhaps you"d like something more ornate--a catalepsy or a trade spasm, maybe--with miner"s nystagmus or something of that kind?"
"Wait a bit till I think," said Tom, and he sat puffing at his pipe for five minutes. "Sit down again, Jack," he continued. "I think we could do something better than this. You see, a fit isn"t a very deadly thing, and if I did bring you through one there would be no credit in it. If we are going to work this thing, we may as well work it well. We can only do it once. It wouldn"t do for the same fashionably dressed stranger to be turning up a second time. People would begin to smell a rat."