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Show VALUE OF A DOCTOR'S SERVICES. <br><br> I was called at midnight to visit a gentleman who had just returned from a late dinner, where he had succeeded by hasty eating in lodging a large fish-bone in his throat. I provided myself with an emetic, a pair of esophagus forceps and other paraphernalia designed to give him relief, and hurriedly repaired to his room. I found him pacing up and down the floor with a look of intense distress and anxiety, occasionally running his fingers down his throat and gagging. He told me in tones of despair that he thought it was all up with him, but begged me, if the least glimmer of hope remained, to proceed at once in my efforts to relieve him. He extravagantly declared in the generosity of spirit begot by the vividness of his fears, that he would give a million dollars to have that fish-bone removed. I assured him that such cases were frequent, and ordinarily not attended with much danger, before proceeding to carry out measures for relief. His fears underwent some diminution on the strength of this, and he then declared that fifty thousand dollars would no more than repay the skill and art required to extricate the no welcome intruder. I smiled and proceeded to introduce the forceps, but after several attempts, failed to grasp the bone. His fears again induced him to mention a fabulous sum as the meed of the service that would expel the object of his terrors. I then gave him the emetic, its depressing effect causing his generosity to rise again, barometric-like, to a very high pressure. In a little while the emetic disburdened him of the greater part of his dinner, and with it up came the fish-bone. He gave a sigh and look of relief and solemnly looking towards me said: "Doctor, I wouldn't have that thing in my throat again for $5!" My fee eventually resolved itself into the "valuable experience" that the occasion afforded me. -New York Medical Record. |