She looked
more than ever like an animated fungus.
Her teeth - her teeth! The pain was past enduring. The whole jaw, rather;
all the teeth at one and the same time; they were unaccountably loose
and felt, moreover, three inches longer than they ought to feel. Never
had she suffered such agony - never in all her life. What could it be?
It was easy to diagnose periostitis, and prescribe tincture of iodine.
"That will cost about a franc," she observed.
"Very likely."
"I think I'll wait."
Next day the pain was worse instead of better. She would give anything
to obtain relief - anything!
"Anything?" I inquired. "Then you had better have a morphia injection. I
have had numbers of them, for the same trouble. The pain will vanish
like magic. There is my friend Dr. Theophile Fornari - - "
"I know all about him. He demands five francs a visit, even from poor
people like myself."
"You really cannot expect a busy practitioner to come here and climb
your seventy-two stairs for much less than five francs."
"I think I'll wait. Anyhow, I am not wasting money on food just now, and
that is a consolation."
Now periostitis can hardly be called an amusing complaint, and I would
have purchased a franc's worth of iodine for almost anybody on earth.
Not then.
