. . This equipage, though
much more expensive than his finances could bear, he found absolutely
necessary to give him a chance of employment . . . A walking physician
was considered as an obscure pedlar." A chariot, Smollett insists, was
necessary to "every raw surgeon"; while Bob Sawyer's expedient of "being
called from church" was already _vieux jeu_, in the way of advertisement.
Such things had been "injudiciously hackneyed." In this passage of
Fathom's adventures, Smollett proclaims his insight into methods of
getting practice. A physician must ingratiate himself with apothecaries
and ladies' maids, or "acquire interest enough" to have an infirmary
erected "by the voluntary subscriptions of his friends." Here Smollett
denounces hospitals, which "encourage the vulgar to be idle and
dissolute, by opening an asylum to them and their families, from the
diseases of poverty and intemperance." This is odd morality for one who
suffered from "the base indifference of mankind." He ought to have known
that poverty is not a vice for which the poor are to be blamed; and that
intemperance is not the only other cause of their diseases. Perhaps the
unfeeling passage is a mere paradox in the style of his own Lismahago.
With or without a chariot, it is probable that Tobias had not an
insinuating style, or "a good bedside manner"; friends to support a
hospital for his renown he had none; but, somehow, he could live in May
Fair, and, in 1746, could meet Dr.
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