Wilkie Collins

Heart and Science Wilkie Collins

Book Excerpt: ...y express request. He took his time to examine and think; and he saw the chance of saving the patient by venturing on the use of the lancet as plainly as I did--with my forty years' experience to teach me! A young man with that capacity for discovering the remote cause of disease, and with that superiority to the trammels of routine in applying the treatment, has no common medical career before him. His holiday will set his health right in next to no time. I see nothing in his way, at present--not even a woman! But," said Sir Richard, with the explanatory wink of one eye peculiar (like quotation from Shakespeare) to persons of the obsolete old time, "we know better than to forecast the weather if a petticoat influence appears on the horizon. One prediction, however, I do risk. If his mother buys any of that lace--I know who will get the best of the bargain!"The conditions under which the old doctor was willing to assume the character of a prophet never occurred. Ovid remembered that he was go...