The Physician

14 April, in the year of our Lord 2020

Up, unsettled through the night with thoughts of my house its plasterwork outside, and now by an itch, in perticular between the fingers despite plentiful jell which I have used these two weekes on the hour. Propitious that on my lane doth live a ‘Physician in Diseases of the Integument, Venus and the Pox’, an arcane branch of Physick though better than a bone setter. I know not what is an integument but my skin is sore so in the afternoon to him, where before I open my mouth am admonished, ‘Do you not understand the words “Stay Home”?’, a reprimand I deserved but an imperative I think ungrammatical. He grumpy, and refrayning from touch took a magnifying glass, the biggest I ever did see in my life, to my hands, sucking his breath through his teeth the while. Presently he did recline, I startled for a moment for it seem’d his eyes did bulge, his nose huge and his head disfigured as if from a night dread! I suggested he might now lay aside the magnifying glass, and ventured, ‘Is it a case of if it be wet, dry it, and if it be dry…?’. He did glare me to silence and bark, ‘What chance it be the Mite?’. I thought only of my lady MacSporran, with whom jo avais essayé hazer plaisir while her husband at his kilt-maker, but unlikely her for she all the while still with eyeglasses, fur hat and gloves, muffled by the fabric wrapped around her nose and mouth, and complaining this ‘was not her idea of Special Distancing’. So I did answer, ‘None!’, though lacked conviction. He did advise it would suffice to forbear from jell forthwith, which I had used too much, and nothing more. A bill for a guinea, follow up in six weekes and, from all the unguents, herbs, powders, tonics, phials, flasks and impregnated bandages, a pair of cotton gloves and a large tub of paste. Feeling I had best leave ‘Surely better is “Stay at home”?’ to a later date, I inquired how frequent to apply the paste, and dismissed with: ‘It is not for your hands, it is for your plasterwork. Get out.’ Feeling no better and strangely wrong-footed, supper and to bed.