's, had been at once inclined to try
him; also, many who did not like paying their doctor's bills, thought agreeably
of opening an account with a new doctor and sending for him without stint if the
children's temper wanted a dose, occasions when the old practitioners were often
crusty; and all persons thus inclined to employ Lydgate held it likely that he
was clever. Some considered that he might do more than others »where there was
liver;« - at least there would be no harm in getting a few bottles of »stuff«
from him, since if these proved useless it would still be possible to return to
the Purifying Pills, which kept you alive, if they did not remove the
yellowness. But these were people of minor importance. Good Middlemarch families
were of course not going to change their doctor without reason shown; and
everybody who had employed Mr. Peacock did not feel obliged to accept a new man
merely in the character of his successor, objecting that he was »not likely to
be equal to Peacock.«
    But Lydgate had not been long in the town before there were particulars
enough reported of him to breed much more specific expectations and to intensify
differences into partisanship; some of the particulars being of that impressive
order of which the significance is entirely hidden, like a statistical amount
without a standard of comparison, but with a note of exclamation at the end. The
cubic feet of oxygen yearly swallowed by a full-grown man - what a shudder they
might have created in some Middlemarch circles! »Oxygen! nobody knows what that
may be - is it any wonder the cholera has got to Dantzic? And yet there are
people who say quarantine is no good!«
    One of the facts quickly rumoured was that Lydgate did not dispense drugs.
This was offensive both to the physicians whose exclusive distinction seemed
infringed on, and to the surgeon-apothecaries with whom he ranged himself; and
only a little while before, they might have counted on having the law on their
side against a man who without calling himself a London-made M.D. dared to ask
for pay except as a charge on drugs. But Lydgate had not been experienced enough
to foresee that his new course would be even more offensive to the laity; and to
Mr. Mawmsey, an important grocer in the Top Market, who, though not one of his
patients, questioned, him in an affable manner on the subject, he was
injudicious enough to give a hasty popular explanation of his reasons, pointing
out to Mr. Mawmsey that it must lower the character