and will advance the worldly interests of his
friends, and himself alike, by seasonable hints,
by direct information and suggestion. He will
like nothing so much as a prompt summons,
founded on the mere suspicion of approaching
illness; and when illness comes he will be, if
possible, more diligent than he is now in his
endeavour to subdue it quickly and completely.

The plan I propose would serve also, in some
degree, as a safeguard against unprincipled and
incompetent men who hold diplomas. There
will always be some of this class. Now, they
pour medicine into the sick until the physic is
a much more serious thing to recover from than
the mere natural disturbance of the system.
But if there were no more than the settled
annual fee to receive, every unnecessary pill
would be so much cash out of pocket. The
swallowing of nauseous and pernicious drugs, for
the benefit of a rogue's Christmas bills, would be
at an end. The premium would be, not upon
over-dosing, but upon under-dosing, even among
the most competent men very often, and among
ignorant men always, that can result only in
improvement of the patient's prospect of
recovery.

Any general adoption of the principle I advocate
would also put an end to many forms of
professional jealousy, would raise the tone of the
profession, give it more dignity, and much greater
facility for the performance of its duty to the
public. Even the most hardened of us, if
originally good for anything, often feels a natural
reserve that restrains him from giving the help
he desires to offer, but might be thought to
obtrude for a commercial reason of his own.
The bill is a ghost at the sick-bed, speculated
about and dreaded by the friends of the sick, and
afterwards always to be associated with the
service rendered. The fee settled, without any
relation to particular weeks of suffering and
sorrow, would leave to the doctor his honest
satisfaction, and to his friends their grateful
recollection unalloyed.

Alexis Pildraught, speaking for himself alone,
is very sure that a day must come, sooner or
later, when the duty of maintaining health will
receive such active attention that the relations
between medical men and the public must be
placed upon some such footing as this. Once
fairly make the proposed change, and every man
has, without burden to his means, the full use of
such medical knowledge as he may think most
trustworthy. At present, a household in full
health, and with the paying power at its highest,
pays nothing at all, and, when stricken most,
pays the most heavily for aid of science. Who
would not rather compound with his doctor for
the yearly payment of an average on five or six
years' bins, and have free use of him, than run
whatever chance he may under the present
system?

But what will my brethren tell me about such
an innovation? Perhaps there may be some
who would expect to lose by it. I believe that
it would be their gain. Nay, I am not afraid to
suggest that it might double the wealth, as well
as the influence, of the profession. That is, no
doubt, because I am, like all schemers, very
sanguine. Money would flow to us from the
great multitude of the sound, instead of being
taken only from the house of sickness. Healthy
people, who but seldom incur doctors' bills,
would gladly join the clientèle of those to whom
they should look for aid when out of health, and
would obtain a right to ask for useful information,
as well as an insurance against doctors'
bills by paying a small yearly fee. The wider
the adoption of the principle, the lower might
the fee be. Country doctors find it worth their
while, as matter of income, to give their services
to all the members of a club of mechanics,
paying no more than four shillings apiece to
have use of a doctor all the year round, and if
all the people in the parish in and above that
grade of life came into such a club, four shillings
being paid for each of them, to his, her, or
its own particular adviser, country doctors, as a
body, would assuredly be richer than they are,
except in very thinly-peopled districts, where
either the doctor starves, or one or two rich
landowners will lay in physic by the hamper for the
good of the profession.

But my suggestion does not contemplate a
rough conversion of the public into a great
national Sick Club, distributed according to the
election of each member among its doctors.
There could be no uniform rate. Healthy men
should not have to pay for other men's inherited
diseases. Twenty particular considerations
might go to the determination of the annual fee
paid by each individual, or household, for
medical advice and aid. Even upon an average
of past years, a fee could not be settled without
some little reasonable forecast of the future. At
any time it would, of course, be open to
reconsideration, and terminable at any moment, with
loss of the current year's fee, by the person who
dissolved the contract.

Now, if the change I propose be desirable, the
first step to it must be discussion. All that
Alexis Pildraught here proposes is the seasonable
exchange of a little discussion, among all doctors
and patients whom these matters may concern.

                 The Seventh Journey of
      THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER,
   A SERIES OF OCCASIONAL JOURNEYS,
                  BY CHARLES DICKENS,
                      Will appear in No. 52.

  On the 12th instant, price 5s. 6d., bound in cloth,
                   THE SECOND VOLUME,
  Including Nos. 27 to 50, and the Christmas Double
          Number, of ALL THE YEAR ROUND.