He showed up on, well, I guess it was the following Tuesday. The Tuesday after the Saturday the bum had shown up and Amy and I had decided to elope. He was a tall, stoop-shouldered guy with a face that seemed to be all bone and yellowish tightly drawn skin. He said his name was Dr. John Smith and that he was just passing through; he was just looking around in this section, and he'd heard--he'd thought, perhaps--that the house and the practice might be on the market.
It was around nine o'clock in the morning. By rights, I should have been headed for the courthouse. But I wasn't knocking myself out, these days, to get downtown; and Dad had always laid himself out for any doctors that came around.
"I've thought about selling it, off and on," I said, "but that's about as far as it's gone. I've never taken any steps in that direction. But come in, anyway. Doctors are always welcome in this house."
I sat him down in the office and brought out a box of cigars, and got him some coffee. Then, I sat down with him and tried to visit. I can't say that I liked him much. He kept staring at me out of his big yellow eyes like I was really some sort of curiosity, something to look at instead of to talk to. But--well, doctors get funny mannerisms. They live in an I'm-the-King world, where everyone else is wrong but them.
"You're a general practitioner, Doctor Smith?" I said. "I wouldn't want to discourage you, but I'm afraid the general practice field is pretty well the monopoly here of long-established doctors. Now--I haven't thought too much about disposing of this place, but I might consider it--now, I do think there's room for a good man in pediatrics or obstetrics...."
I let it hang there, and he blinked and came out of his trance.
"As a matter of fact, I am interested in those fields, Mr. Ford. I would--uh--hesitate to call myself a specialist, but--uh--"
"I think you might find an opening here, then," I said. "What's been your experience in treating nephritis, doctor? Would you say that inoculation with measles has sufficiently proven itself as a curative agent to warrant the inherent danger?"
"Well, uh--uh--" He crossed his legs. "Yes and no."
I nodded seriously. "You feel that there are two sides to the question?"
"Well--uh--yes."
"I see," I said. "I'd never thought about it quite that way, but I can see that you're right."
"That's your--uh--specialty, Mr. Ford? Children's diseases?"
"I haven't any specialty, doctor," I laughed. "I'm living proof of the adage about the shoemaker's son going barefooted. But I've always been interested in children, and I suppose the little I do know about medicine is confined to pediatrics."
"I see. Well, uh, as a matter of fact, most of my work has been in--uh--geriatrics."
"You should do well here, then," I said. "We have a high percentage of elderly people in the population. Geriatrics, eh?"
"Well, uh, as a matter of fact..."
"You know "Max Jacobsohn on Degenerative Diseases?" What do you think of his theorem as to the ratio between decelerated activity and progressive senility? I can understand the basic concept, of course, but my math isn't good enough to allow me to appreciate his formulae. Perhaps you'll explain them to me?"
"Well, I--uh--it's pretty complicated...."
"I see. You feel, perhaps, that Jacobsohn's approach may be a trifle empirical? Well, I was inclined to that belief myself, for a time, but I'm afraid it may have been because my own approach was too subjective. For instance. Is the condition pathological? Is it psychopathological? Is it psycho-pathological-psychosomatic? Yes, yes, yes. It can be one or two or all three--"but" in varying degrees, doctor. Like it or not, we must contemplate an x factor. Now, to strike an equation--and you'll pardon me for oversimplifying--let's say that our cosine is..."
