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Doctors seldom approve of their patients taking their treatment into their own hands; but, after a little consideration, he said he would furnish the prescription, but that it would cost ten dollars. This quite astonished the rich man, and at first he refused to pay such a high price; but, after considering that it might save him many visits from the new doctor who should come to Rahway, he agreed to pay the price demanded, and the prescription was written, and delivered to him. When he reached his home, he thought he would try to make out what this prescription was; but when he opened the paper, he found nothing but the word “catnip.” It is not likely that he ever again tried to take advantage of the medical profession.

But it was not always Jersey doctors whose wit shone brightest in a financial transaction. There was a doctor in the town of Rocky Hill who was sent for to attend a poor old man who was suffering with a piece of bone sticking in his throat. The doctor went immediately to the old man’s house, and it was not long before the bone was out. As the doctor was packing up his instruments, the old fellow, whose name was William, inquired how much he would have to pay; and the doctor replied that for an operation of that sort his charge was five dollars. This quite astonished William, who probably had not five cents in the house; but he wished to pay his debts, and not to be considered a pauper patient, and so he asked the doctor if he might come to his house and work out the bill. The doctor replied that that would be entirely satisfactory to him, and that William might come the next day and work in the garden.

The next day old William went to the doctor’s house. All day he faithfully dug and hoed and raked. Toward the end of the afternoon the doctor came into the garden, and, after informing William that he might come again, he casually asked him how much he charged for a day’s work. William stood up and promptly answered, that for a day’s labor in the garden his charge was five dollars. Now was the doctor surprised.

“You don’t mean,” he exclaimed, “that you are going to ask five dollars for one day’s labor!”

“That is exactly my price,” said William. “If two minutes’ yanking with a pair of pincers at a little bone is worth five dollars, then one day’s hard labor in tilling the ground is worth just as much.”

It often happens that doctors are men of wit and humor; and it is recorded that a New Jersey physician, named Dr. Hole, was the author of the first version of a tombstone epitaph which afterwards became widely known and used. The lines of Dr. Hole are cut upon a tombstone of a child, and run as follows:–

“A dropsy sore long time I bore:
Forsitions were in vain
Till God above did hear my moan,
And eased me of my pain.”

That some of those early doctors were honest is proved by a doctor’s bill which is now preserved in the New Jersey Historical Society. At the end of this bill, after all the different items of service and medicine had been charged upon it, there is this entry: “Contrary credit by Medsons brought back.” It would be difficult now to find a doctor in New Jersey, or anywhere else, who would be willing to take back, and allow credit for, all partly filled bottles of medicine, and boxes of pills, the contents of which had been ordered, but not entirely used.