He did not know that the worthy doctor was one of those harmless
inanities who, by the aid of money and powerful connections, are
sometimes forced into a position which nature never intended them to
occupy. Among the real working men of that great and admirable
brotherhood, the medical profession, Dr. Doddleson had no rank; but he
was the pet physician of fashionable dowagers suffering from chronic
laziness or periodical attacks of ill-humour. For the spleen or the
vapours no one was a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. He could afford
to waste half an hour upon the asking of questions which the fair
patient's maid might as well have asked, and the suggestions of remedies
which any intelligent abigail could as easily have suggested. Elderly
ladies believed in him because he was pompous and ponderous, lived in an
expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore
mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the
matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating,
declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian
angel of their frail lives during the last twenty years.
This was the man who, of all the medical profession resident in London,
Mr. Sheldon had selected as his stepdaughter's medical adviser in a case
so beyond common experience, that a man of wide practice and keen
perception was especially needed for its treatment.
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