Middlemarch

Opposition to Lydgate’s New Fever Hospital

The opposition to Lydgate’s New Fever Hospital—which he had earlier sketched to Dorothea—is introduced as a phenomenon to be viewed from many different angles. Lydgate himself regards it as a mixture of jealousy and stubborn prejudice, while Mr. Bulstrode perceives in it both medical jealousy and a determination to thwart him personally, motivated by hatred of the vital religion he represents.

Divergent Views on Hospital Opposition

Beyond these “ministerial views,” opposition draws on the illimitable range of objections that can be fueled by ignorance. The chapter notes that Middlemarch’s opposition to the New Hospital carried considerable echo and imitation, since not everyone can be an originator. The dissent spans every social shade, from the polished moderation of Dr. Minchin to the trenchant assertions of Mrs. Dollop, landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane.

Range of Arguments Against the New Hospital

The chapter observes that opposition commands a virtually unlimited range of objections, which never need to stop at the boundary of knowledge because ignorance provides endless material. The arguments about the New Hospital and its administration reflected this pattern, drawing on echoes and imitations rather than original reasoning, while nonetheless expressing every gradation of Middlemarch society.

Mrs. Dollop’s Accusations Against Lydgate

Mrs. Dollop becomes increasingly convinced by her own assertions that Dr. Lydgate intends to let patients die in the Hospital—or even poison them—in order to dissect them without permission. She cites the supposed “fac” that he wished to cut up Mrs. Goby, a respectable Parley Street woman. Mrs. Dollop argues that a good doctor should diagnose illness before death rather than pry into bodies afterward, and her audience regards her opinion as a bulwark against unchecked dissection, invoking the infamous Burke and Hare case as a cautionary parallel.

Tankard Inn Benefit Club Vote on Lydgate

Opinion at the Tankard in Slaughter Lane held real significance for the medical profession. The old authentic public-house, known as Dollop’s, served as the resort of a significant Benefit Club that had recently voted on whether to replace their long-standing medical man, Doctor Gambit, with Lydgate, who was reputed capable of astonishing cures. The vote went against Lydgate by two members who held that resuscitating the near-dead was an equivocal recommendation potentially interfering with providential favors.

Shift in Public Sentiment Towards Lydgate

Over the course of the year, a change in public sentiment occurred, of which the unanimity at Dollop’s served as an index. The Benefit Club’s collective opinion thus marked a broader shift in how Middlemarch viewed the new doctor, moving from suspicion toward greater acceptance.

Early Judgments of Lydgate’s Skill

More than a year earlier, before Lydgate’s skill was known, judgments about him had naturally been divided, relying on visceral senses of likelihood rather than evidence. Patients with chronic or threadbare lives, like old Featherstone’s, were quick to try him, while parents who disliked paying doctors’ bills welcomed the chance to send freely for a new practitioner. Some thought he might do more than others for liver complaints, while good Middlemarch families were not inclined to change doctors without demonstrated reason, with former Peacock patients doubting the new man’s equality to their old physician.

Rumor Lydgate Does Not Dispense Drugs

One quickly circulating rumor was that Lydgate did not dispense drugs. This was offensive both to physicians whose exclusive distinction seemed infringed and to surgeon-apothecaries with whom he ranged himself; legally, they might have had grounds for objection. However, Lydgate had not foreseen that his practice would prove even more offensive to the general public than to his professional rivals.

Lydgate’s Explanation to Mr. Mawmsey

To Mr. Mawmsey, an important grocer in the Top Market who questioned him affably about the matter, Lydgate gave a hasty and injudicious popular explanation of his reasons. He argued that paying practitioners solely through long bills for draughts, boluses, and mixtures lowered the profession’s character and injured the public, and that hard-working medical men could become as mischievous as quacks by overdosing patients to earn their bread—“a bad sort of treason” that undermines the constitution.