Back Sir Charles Grandison
Chapters (10)
  1. SIR CHARLES GRANDISON
  2. PREFACE.
  3. NAMES OF THE PRINCIPAL PERSONS.
  4. VOLUME I.
  5. VOLUME II.
  6. VOLUME III.
  7. VOLUME IV.
  8. VOLUME V.
  9. VOLUME VI.
  10. VOLUME VII.

Mr. Lowther is a man of spirit, though a modest man. He is, as on every proper occasion 1 found, a man of piety; and has a heart tender as manly. Such a man, heart and hand, is qualified for a profession which is the most useful and certain in the art of healing. He is a man of sense and learning out of his profession, and happy in his address.

The two Surgeons who now attend Signor Jero-nymo, are both of this country. They were sent for. With the approbation, and at the request, of the family, I presented Mr. Lowther to them; but first gave them his character, as a modest man, as a man of skill and experience; and told them, that he had quitted business, and wanted not either fame or fortune.

They acquainted him with the case, and their methods of proceeding. Mr. Lowther assisted in the dressings that very evening. Jeronymo would have me to be present. Mr. Lowther suggested an alteration in their method, but in so easy and gen-tle a manner (as if he doubted not, but such was their intention when the state of the wounds would admit of that method of treatment) that the gen-tleraen came readily into it. A great deal of matter had been collected, by means of the wrong methods pursued; and he proposed, if the patient’s strength would bear it, to make an aperture below the prin-cipal wound, in order to discharge the matter down — ward; and he suggested the dressing with hollow tents and bandage, and to dismiss the large tents, with which they had been accustomed to distend the wound, to the extreme anguish of the patient, on pretence of keeping it open, to assist the discharge. Let me now give you, my dear friend, a brief history of my Jeronymo’s case, and of the circum-stances which have attended it; by which you will be able to account for the difficulties of it, and how it has happened, that, in such a space of time, either the cure was not effected, or that the patient yielded not to the common destiny.

In lingering cases, patients or their friends are sometimes too apt to blame their physicians, and to listen to new recommendations. The surgeons at-tending this unhappy case, had been more than once changed. Signor Jeronymo, it seems, was unskil-fully treated by the young surgeon of Cremona, who was first engaged; he neglected the most dan-gerous wound; and, when he attended to it, ma — nanaged it wrong, for want of experience. He was therefore very properly dismissed.

The unhappy man had at first three wounds: one in his breast, which had been for some time healed; one in his shoulder, which, through his own impa-tience, having been too suddenly healed up, was obliged to be laid open again: the other, which is the most dangerous, in the hip-joint.