Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XVII. Doctors
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a high sum of money to the unknown owner of
the ruined little chapel at San Michele—it took
me ten years to settle that business. Already
then a keen lover of art, my rooms in Avenue de
Villiers were full of treasures of bygone times,
and over a dozen fine old clocks chimed every
hour of my often sleepless nights. For some
inexplicable reason these periods of wealth were
not seldom interrupted by moments when I had
no money at all. Rosalie knew it, the concièrge
knew it, even the fournisseurs knew it. Norstrom
also knew it for I often had to borrow money
from him. He said it could only be explained
by some defect in my mental machinery, the
remedy was to keep proper accounts and to send
regular bills to my patients like everybody else.
I said it was hopeless to try to keep accounts and
as to writing bills I had never done it and was not
going to do it. Our profession was not a trade
but an art, this trafficking in suffering was a
humiliation to me. I blushed scarlet when a
patient put his twenty franc piece on my table
and when he put it in my hand I felt as if I wanted
to hit him. Norstrom said it was nothing but
sheer vanity and conceit on my part, that I
should grab all the money I could lay my hands
on, as all my colleagues did, even if handed me
by the undertaker. I said our profession was a
holy office on the same level as that of the priest
if not higher, where surplus money-making should
be forbidden by law. The doctors should be paid
by the State and well paid like the judges in
England. Those who did not like this
arrangement should leave the profession and go on the
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