Dr. Campbell

“ I asked for the doctor, meaning Dr. Campbell, and your servant——"
"My mother, sir!"
There was pride as well as challenge in the brown eyes now, and I found myself liking the young man better than ever.
"I beg your pardon—Mrs. Roger showed me in by mistake, I fear."
"It was no mistake—I am sometimes called so in this place, though not by my own will; I have no right to the title!"
"Well," I said, as I looked round the room. "won't you shake hands with me? You don't know what a pleasure it is to meet a man of science, as it is evident you are, here in these forlorn uplands!" ”

“ He is taking a run to Madras to see a case he has in the hospital there. You'll enjoy Campbell's talk. He's an awfully bright fellow," Mark added, thinking that such an acquaintance might be salutary for this shifty looking man. He was glancing round in search of the doctor whom he saw talking to a Hindu official.
"Oh, thanks, no," replied Rayner, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I've got a brief to study in the train. I must deny myself the pleasure of Dr. Campbell's acquaintance." ”

“ Campbell winds just in the same way. You have talk without effect; action without progress; words without thought.
The real truth is, Dr. Campbell is one of the failures of the age. His ‘Martyr of Erromanga’ has been his only creditable work. No man has talked more, or done less. He attempts too much. He would be everything, and is nothing. Superficiality has ever been his bane. A fatal copiousness of words has ruined him. ”

“ Many years ago he went to his rest, and, at his request, during his last illness, I paid him a farewell visit.
There are few finer descriptions of the country doctor than that contained in Ian Maclaren’s “Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush,” a book which speaks directly home to every true Scottish heart.
Dr. Campbell, in his large-hearted and genial Christian charity, scientific research, and philosophical acquirements, always reminded me of Sir Thomas Browne, “the beloved physician” of Norwich. ”

“ Campbell a mightier effort than the ascent of Mont Blanc. All he asks on behalf of his pupils is a fair field: he wants no favour. Two instances of the difficulty of securing even this may be given. An organist was wanted for a large church; Dr. Campbell was anxious that one of his pupils should compete. From the first the authorities declared it was impossible a blind man could hold the position, and to make it impossible the candidates were to be called on to play any two tunes from the hymn-book which any two people in the congregation might select. ”

“ A man of strong prejudices and weak will, the doctor says he is—in confidence, of course. But he's a bit of a 'griffin' yet is Dr. Campbell, though he's a dear, and so is his wife. However, this news doesn't matter to me personally," continued the visitor, rolling her eyes on Mrs. Goldring, who was not altogether able to conceal her annoyance, much as she desired to do so. "You see I haven't any marriageable daughter with seasons passing over her head! I declare, one sometimes is made thankful for what is often foolishly regarded as a privation," she added with a sigh. ”

“ My first move after breakfast was to telephone Campbell at his city home. He hailed me joyfully and ordered me to stay where I was, that is, at the hotel. He would be there in an hour, he said.
He was five minutes ahead of his promise. We shook hands heartily.
“You are going to take my prescription, after all,” he crowed. “Didn't I tell you I was the only real doctor for sick authors? Bully for you! Wish I was going with you. Who is?” ”

“ She saw an odd gleam come into the doctor's deepset eyes, an expression she did not understand. For the moment the cold scientist was non-existent.
"Find that needle," he commanded, his whole huge frame tense with suppressed fury. "It is the principle that matters. I have no use for careless people." ”

“ Carved deep in the physical tissues of the brain, they spoke dimly as implanted instincts to George Campbell; and his human consciousness seized them and translated them to show him the way not only to safety and freedom, but to the power his soul, stripped to its primitive impulses, craved. Not as a slave would he dwell on Yekub, but as a king! Just as of old barbarians had sat on the throne of lordly empires. ”

“ Still, he might; he's queer. That's the worst of having the doctor living in the house. Such a nuisance!"
She spent halt an hour manicuring her nails and then, still feeling wide-awake, decided on a bath. The bathroom was between her room and the doctor's. On entering she found it, as usual, so stiflingly hot that she was obliged to throw open the casement window and let the cool, moist air steal into the room. For several minutes she leaned out, breathing in the night odours of the dark garden. With them came a heavier odour that was familiar, the acrid, pungent smell of the doctor's tobacco. ”

“ As the variform creature that was George Campbell crawled between the black blocks of stone thousands of worm-shapes prostrated themselves in the scintillating dust before it. A godlike power seemed to emanate from its weaving body as it moved with a slow, undulant motion toward a throne of spiritual empire transcending all the sovereignties of earth.
A trapper stumbling wearily through the dense woods of earth near the tent where the worm-creature dwelt in the body of George Campbell came to the gleaming waters of the lake and discerned something dark floating there. ”

“ What do you think?"
"I don't know," she answered slowly. "Anyhow, the doctor is taking it seriously. He's given her an injection of anti-toxin for typhoid."
"And why not? He must earn his money. Besides, it won't do her any harm."
She smiled doubtfully.
"She really does look ill," she said.
"And so would you if you'd been in a couple of rages like hers within twelve hours," he retorted quickly, then, as though he had committed himself, changed the current of thought suddenly. "What a conscientious child you are, Esther," he said, smiling at her; "you won't let me abuse anyone, will you? ”

“ Campbell and said:
“I feel like giving up the case. I honestly confess I can make nothing of it. The man’s appetite, digestion and assimilation are excellent. His pulse is strong, his temperature normal, his respiration perfect, and yet he seems too weak to leave his bed, and he falls into delirium or stupor day and night.”
“Pray do not give up the case, doctor. If there is any one you would like to have called in consultation now——”
The rector paused.
“Well, yes, sir, there is. Sir Ichabod Ingoldsby, the great authority on the diseases of the brain and nervous system. ”

“ He still lay on the couch-like thing in the midst of that fantastic room, and the centipede man stood before him, holding the polished metal object, and clashing its neck-spikes. Thus it spoke to him, Campbell knew, and what it said he dimly understood, through the implanted thought processes of Tothe, just as he knew the creature was Yukth, supreme lord of science. ”

“ She knew that many women made confidants of their medical men; there was nothing surprising in Lady Clifford's unburdening herself to Sartorius on the subject of her husband's will. The overbearing familiarity with which the doctor treated her was harder to understand, yet even there it was difficult to say there was anything abnormal. It merely suggested that these two had known each other a long time, had not, indeed, the formal relation of physician and patient. ”

“ Campbell had already begun to suffer from Johnson’s demon of hypochondria, and when the novelty of his surroundings had worn off, he felt himself in the worst imaginable plight of the stranger in a strange land. The following programme of his day’s doings affords a hint of his wretchedness:
I rise at seven—thanks to the flies that forbid me to sleep—and after returning thanks to God for prolonging my miserable existence at Ratisbon, I put on a pair of boots and pantaloons, and study with open windows, and half-naked, till ten o’clock. ”

“ It's so stupid going alone, hardly any fun at all.... Of course, I don't know what the doctor would think if I began running about like that. He probably wouldn't approve."
"Do you like him?" asked her companion suddenly.
"Dr. Sartorius?" she replied, knitting her brows. "I hardly know.... I suppose the fact is I neither like nor dislike him. I admire him very much indeed; I think he's a frightfully clever physician and scientist."
"But as a man?"
"I don't believe he is a man, quite," she laughed. "At least, one can't exactly think of him as one." ”

“ Before the nine o'clock bell had ceased ringing, every boy was in his place in the big school-room—a rare occurrence, indeed—waiting eagerly for the appearance of the Doctor. For boys like nothing better than a "row" when they themselves are not implicated. And remember, those who were so implicated were but an exceedingly small fraction of the whole number. What the guilty ones felt will best be known by those who have been in a similar position.
Dr Palmer entered with the Examiner, a fresh-coloured young man, in a very new gown, and a very new hood, thrown jauntily over his shoulders. ”

“ I cannot help my nature!" sighed the Frenchwoman amicably enough. "I always fear the worst. I suppose now we had better ask the doctor if we can tell Charles about Roger's coming?"
"Is the doctor with him?"
"I will see."
She crossed to the door at the far side of the room and opening it spoke softly to someone inside. A second later the nurse stuck her head through the opening. She was a smiling, angular woman of forty, with fluffy, mouse-coloured hair, and a frosty tip to her nose.
"Do you wish to see the doctor, Lady Clifford?" ”

“ Campbell had no objection—and the door of the private office sharply shut; young Burnett and Graham Carr exchanging admiring commentary down the stairs; their tread dying away; low continuous murmur of voices from the inner room; save for that, silence all about the reader, where he sat at his desk, amid a medley of proofs and manuscript, blotting-paper, ledgers, and foolscap. ”

“ Sleep has become a stranger to him; every morning finds him with a headache. Study and composition are out of the question. He sits ‘under the ear-crashing influence of ten thousand chariot wheels’; when night comes on he has no solace but his pipe, and he drops into bed like an old sinner dropping into the grave.
Campbell was very likely homesick, but his correspondence and the evidence of his intimates put it beyond doubt that he was not cut out for society. ”

“ Campbell leads the way from his house to any part of the grounds is somewhat disquieting to those who do not know him. He walks without stick, and without stumbling, and runs up and down flights of steps without troubling even to grasp the rail at the side. How can he tell when he reaches a corner or the top of a flight of steps, to tumble down which would be to break his neck? He learns where he is by the most ingenious contrivance imaginable. Wherever there is a turning, or an obstacle, or a step which might prove a source of danger or embarrassment, the asphalted pathway is slightly raised. ”

“ Yet the doctor is so positive about it, although he hasn't said much. And when a man like that makes a statement, one is almost forced to believe there must be something in it. In any case it occurred to me that if his theory is true she might have left Cannes and gone away, quite forgetting for the moment that she was going to communicate with us. She may even have lost her memory, you know."
"Then if she has," declared Roger firmly, getting to his feet, "there's all the more reason for my making every effort to find her. ”

“ He was engaged now in trying to find anti-toxins for certain deadly diseases, tetanus for one. When she thought of the extent to which his efforts might benefit humanity, she felt inclined to forget the man's repellent personality in the dignity of his accomplishments.
As for what she had to do, she found it neither very difficult nor very tiring—not half so hard as ordinary nursing. While the doctor was out on a round of visits, she put the laboratory to rights, arranging everything neatly and in perfect order, for that was of paramount importance to her employer ”

“ Campbell, whom Harry is in treaty with for articles on the brain and nervous system—a nice, charming, agreeable fellow, and a perfect enthusiast in science, and has got so far that love or hatred or inspiration or heroism or religion is nothing in his view but what he calls "cerebration"—he is so lost and absorbed in cerebration and molecules, and all that sort of thing, that you feel all the time he is observing you to get facts about some of his theories as they do the poor mice and butterflies they experiment with. ”

“ So they sat there side by side in the great hospital and pondered, waiting for the verdict from the white room above them.
Suddenly Dr. Shumway stood before them. "It is all over," he began, smiling cheerfully. "She will—"
"All over," whispered Mrs. Campbell, and fainted quite away.
When she opened her eyes again, the young doctor was bending over her, chafing her hands, and she heard his remorseful voice saying, "My dear Mrs. Campbell, you misunderstood me. The operation was successful. The little one will live." ”

“ His sister let him go ahead, then halting on the doorstep, took hold of Esther's arm confidentially. "One moment, nurse," she said in an undertone, "I'd like to ask you something. Tell me frankly, do you think the doctor saw anything alarming in my brother's symptoms?"
Her plain, pleasant face was puckered with anxiety, her eyes searched
Esther's.
"Why, no, I honestly think he meant what he said, that it is too soon to tell anything definite."
"I wonder! Doctors are all alike, they never give anything away," and she frowned thoughtfully. ”