Page 642 - middlemarch

In the case of a more conspicuous patient, Mr. Borthrop
Trumbull, Lydgate was conscious of having shown himself
something better than an every-day doctor, though here
too it was an equivocal advantage that he won. The elo-
quent auctioneer was seized with pneumonia, and having
been a patient of Mr. Peacock’s, sent for Lydgate, whom he
had expressed his intention to patronize. Mr Trumbull was
a robust man, a good subject for trying the expectant theory
upon— watching the course of an interesting disease when
left as much as possible to itself, so that the stages might
be noted for future guidance; and from the air with which
he described his sensations Lydgate surmised that he would
like to be taken into his medical man’s confidence, and be
represented as a partner in his own cure. The auctioneer
heard, without much surprise, that his was a constitution
which (always with due watching) might be left to itself, so
as to offer a beautiful example of a disease with all its phases
seen in clear delineation, and that he probably had 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.
Mr. Trumbull acquiesced at once, and entered strongly
into the view that an illness of his was no ordinary occasion
for medical science.
‘Never fear, sir; you are not speaking to one who is alto-
gether ignorant of the vis medicatrix,’ said he, with his usual
superiority of expression, made rather pathetic by difficul-
ty of breathing. And he went without shrinking through
his abstinence from drugs, much sustained by application

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