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Against All Odds: A Gilded Age Romance
- Thread starter Barbaria1
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Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Not to mention the Sense and Sensibility of her father's bank account, if the cure would take longer than anticipated?If I'm following this correctly, Windar is swapping his syllables in order to cure Barb of her Pride and Prejudice
Well, good luck, Dr Darwin. If over forty crucifixions haven't cured her of her, ah, 'zest for life' I don't give a fig for your chances!
windar
Teller of Tales
Barb certainly has Pride, but Prejudice? It seems she will do it with anyone anywhere...If I'm following this correctly, Windar is swapping his syllables in order to cure Barb of her Pride and Prejudice
Well, good luck, Dr Darwin. If over forty crucifixions haven't cured her of her, ah, 'zest for life' I don't give a fig for your chances!
windar
Teller of Tales
Chapter 24.
James Darwin wasn’t really British; he had been born to a family of modest means in Hartford, Connecticut, where his father had worked as a metalsmith at the Colt Armory, producing the guns that won the Mexican and Civil Wars, as well as contributing to the winnowing of the immense buffalo herds and the Plains Indians that depended on them down to a few lonely remnants.
The affectation of a British accent generally seemed to impress the wealthy parents looking to tame their wild daughters. Many asked if he were related to the famous, or, perhaps infamous Charles Darwin. He typically gave a vague answer that left the impression that he well might be, though he was not, of course. James Moore hadn’t asked. It was quite possible that he hadn’t heard of Charles Darwin; he seemed the kind of man that read only what could serve to increase his fortune.
Darwin was, in fact, a doctor of sorts, having graduated from Bennett Medical College in Chicago. The six month course offered by that fine institution in the two rooms it had occupied at the time he had attended gave him a passing knowledge of the field of medicine.
He had honed that knowledge on the frontier, treating gunshot wounds and venereal diseases in dusty towns in the Dakotas and Colorado. The patients in those desolate places had been glad to have his services, even despite his less than prestigious background. Eventually, he had returned back East to found his current Institute. If that background wasn’t good enough for the State of New York and the Medical Society thereof, so be it.
His Institute wasn’t a hospital or a clinic, anyway. It was really a school where the young ladies of the newly wealthy, who had often grown up with very lax oversight from fathers who were busy getting rich, learned the social niceties and how to control the overactive libidos with which so many of them had been blessed.
Besides, Darwin’s methods were not found in any medical textbook. They were his own. And he suspected Barbara Moore would test them to the limit.
While all of his charges had strayed in one way or another, few had done so in quite such a public way, as The Herald had so helpfully reported. To willingly accompany a young man underneath a grandstand populated by thousands of members of high society indicated a level of carnal need at the very highest end of the spectrum.
That had justified him, he felt, in having quoted Moore a price that shocked even him. Moore had made a face, but had signed the contract and written out a check on the spot. The man must be quite desperate with a daughter like Barbara.
Darwin pulled his watch out of his pocket. It was time to examine his newest protégé.
In the dim light of the single gas lamp on the wall of the cell, he could make out her form. She lay on a cot, which was the only furniture in the cell other than a small, white porcelain chamber pot. She was covered by a coarse woolen blanket that was the sole protection she had against the dank air of the basement of the old house, chilly even on this warm afternoon. ‘Quite a come down from the Plaza,’ he thought as he closed the peephole.
“Wait outside, Max,” he ordered. “I’ll call for you if I need you, though I think she’ll have been suitably chastened by the cold bath and her nudity.”
He took the keyring from his assistant and opened the door. Barbara stirred at the sound and sat up, wrapping the blanket around her midsection as best she could, given her restraints.
“I want my clothes,” she announced. “I want to go back to the City. You have no right to take them from me and keep me chained and locked up.”
He smiled gently. “Oh, but, I do. Your father has signed you over to me. I am in loco parentis as they say in Latin.”
“You are loco, that’s for sure.”
He sat down on the cot, carefully so as not to collapse the flimsy structure, placing his black medical bag on the floor at his feet. She moved as far away from him as she could. “Barbara, you are not well. Your behavior at Saratoga showed that. I am here to help you. When you are better you can go home.”
“You can’t keep me naked. That isn’t right.”
“I’m a medical doctor. I have to examine you so that I can prescribe the proper program to address your situation.”
“I’m fine,” she protested. “You’re the one who’s sick, keeping me like this.”
He smiled. “You are saying nothing that all the other girls who’ve been in your position haven’t said. Eventually, they all learned how to tame their passions so that they could have a real marriage to a nice young man, not a roll in the hay, literally in your case, with an unsuitable hustler.”
“I love him and he loves me.”
“Barbara, none of this is your fault. It’s the way you were born, but I will help you to overcome that. Now, please stand up so that I can examine you.”
Barbara sat there, pulling the blanket tighter around herself, if such a thing were possible. “I will make this simple for you,” Darwin continued. “Max is standing outside that door. You no doubt remember Max assisting you with your bath?” Barbara looked like she was about to say something, but held her tongue. “I can have him in here to assist with my examination or he can stay outside. Your choice, Barbara.”
Slowly, reluctantly she stood, adjusting the blanket as best she could in her restraints to cover both her breasts and her lower regions. “That was a wise decision,” Darwin said. “Now hand me the blanket.” She shook her head.
“I have to examine you. I’m a doctor. I’ve seen it all before,” he said. And it was indeed true that he had seen his fair share of naked young women during his time running this Institute. That was a delightful benefit of his current occupation, at least as satisfying as the checks that desperate parents like James Moore wrote.
“Barbara, it is necessary that I examine you. If you feel compelled to resist, I am prepared to summon Max to assist. However, if you co-operate, I will remove the restraints. So, which will it be?”
“Bastard!” she hissed. Nevertheless, her epithet notwithstanding, she slowly unwrapped the blanket from around her torso and dropped it onto the cot. Darwin stared at her open-mouthed. She was a picture of youthful beauty and innocence, her pale skin glowing in the soft light. He could see that she was shivering from the cold and from fear.
‘I can see why that Goldman was willing to take considerable risks to have this one,’ Darwin thought. Her breasts were full and succulent, the nipples erect in the chill air. Her belly was taut, her torso swelling out most enticingly to her well-formed hips.
Her hands had just enough freedom of movement to cover her groin. Darwin fumbled with the keyring, selecting the key that unlocked the restraints. “You will find that I am a man of my word, Barbara, for good and bad. I appreciate your cooperation.”
He unlocked the cuffs at her wrists and then bent to release her ankles, placing the metal chains on the floor next to his medical bag, from which he extracted a stethoscope. He rose and placed it in between her breasts, his hand brushing lightly against the supple flesh. “Breathe,” he instructed. He felt her chest rise and fall.
“Turn around, please,” he ordered. She turned slowly. Her ass was divine, two delightful globes, just begging for the cane or the strap, something he was certain her behavior would earn her on more than one occasion during her stay.
He held the stethoscope to her upper back. “Cough!” he ordered. He repeated this twice more, moving the stethoscope to different locations on her rib cage.
“You may turn around,” he advised her. When she was facing him, he delivered his verdict. “Your heart and lungs are fine, my dear. Now, please lie down on your back.”
Reluctantly, she laid down on the cot, her legs pressed together straight in front of her, one hand covering her crotch and the other held tightly to her breasts. Gently, but firmly, he removed her hands. She returned them to her crotch and chest. “Barbara, we had an agreement that you would co-operate. I have kept my part and removed the restraints. You must keep yours. Now put your hands by your sides, please.”
She didn’t move them, so he picked them up and positioned them as he wanted them. This time she left them there. “Thank you,” he said. Then, moving quickly, he knelt beside the cot, grasped one ankle in each hand and pulled her legs apart, bending the knees so that her feet were flat on the surface.
“Please, no, you can’t,” she said.
“I’m afraid I must examine the site that is the root of your difficulties, my dear.” She tried to pull her legs together, but he held her firmly. “Shall I ask Max to come in?”
Barbara shook her head. “Then you will allow me to proceed with my work,” he said. He felt her resistance slackening. He bent over to get a closer look at her genitals. The outer lips were slightly parted. He inhaled the faintly musky scent.
“I have many years of experience with young women such as you, Barbara. I know how easy it is to give in to the feelings that one gets in those special places. I will teach you to control them so that you can be a proper wife and mother.”
He spread the outer lips further, running one finger up the edges to the little bud at the top, which enlarged as he gently stroked it. Barbara lifted her head. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Lie back and relax. I need to gauge your responsiveness to stimuli.” He reached into his medical bag and removed a large wooden object. Barbara stared at it. “You are familiar with these, I take it?” he asked.
She nodded. “Your father told me of the circumstances regarding his dismissal of your chambermaid. Kristina was her name, I believe?” Barbara nodded again. “He wisely destroyed the one you brought to Saratoga with you, but I must observe your reactions for myself.”
Darwin inserted the object into the spot that nature had designed for such things. Barbara moaned softly. He moved it in and out slowly, all the while gently stroking her clitoris.
Then, he pulled the dildo out and examined it, touching the shaft to assess the wetness. “I will call that a 9 on the Darwin scale of arousal. Would you be able to describe your feelings for me, Barbara?”
“It feels nice, like it’s filling me up,” she allowed.
“Would you like me to put it back in?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she replied, a bit out of breath.
He re-inserted the wooden dildo. Barbara moaned as she had when he had first put it in, but louder. He moved it in and out. “Was this what you wanted that young man, Goldman, to do under the stands at Saratoga?”
“Oh, God, yes,” Barbara replied.
He stroked her clitoris with the finger of one hand, while continuing to fuck her with the dildo. He noted that her breathing had become labored. He could feel the tension in her legs and see that her hands were clenched.
“Are you feeling a tingling inside?” he asked. She nodded.
“I want you to give in and let it all out,” he ordered. “I need to observe everything, so I can design the perfect regimen for you.”
“Yes!” Barbara cried. “I will! Oh, my God! Nowwwww!” she cried. Darwin felt her bare legs squeezing his torso hard as she writhed on the cot, finally relaxing and laying there limp, panting for air.
He pulled the dildo out and held it to his nose. “Hmm, yes,” he muttered. “Perhaps a 10,”he remarked, before wiping it on the blanket and returning it to his bag.
He stood, zipped up his bag and rapped thrice at the door. “Thank you Max, I’m done here for now,” he said, as the door opened. Max handed him a dinner tray which he placed beside the cot on which Barbara laid, totally exhausted.
“I think I have a good sense of what we need to work on. We will start bright and early tomorrow morning,” he told her. He locked the door behind him and followed Max up the stairs.
James Darwin wasn’t really British; he had been born to a family of modest means in Hartford, Connecticut, where his father had worked as a metalsmith at the Colt Armory, producing the guns that won the Mexican and Civil Wars, as well as contributing to the winnowing of the immense buffalo herds and the Plains Indians that depended on them down to a few lonely remnants.
The affectation of a British accent generally seemed to impress the wealthy parents looking to tame their wild daughters. Many asked if he were related to the famous, or, perhaps infamous Charles Darwin. He typically gave a vague answer that left the impression that he well might be, though he was not, of course. James Moore hadn’t asked. It was quite possible that he hadn’t heard of Charles Darwin; he seemed the kind of man that read only what could serve to increase his fortune.
Darwin was, in fact, a doctor of sorts, having graduated from Bennett Medical College in Chicago. The six month course offered by that fine institution in the two rooms it had occupied at the time he had attended gave him a passing knowledge of the field of medicine.
He had honed that knowledge on the frontier, treating gunshot wounds and venereal diseases in dusty towns in the Dakotas and Colorado. The patients in those desolate places had been glad to have his services, even despite his less than prestigious background. Eventually, he had returned back East to found his current Institute. If that background wasn’t good enough for the State of New York and the Medical Society thereof, so be it.
His Institute wasn’t a hospital or a clinic, anyway. It was really a school where the young ladies of the newly wealthy, who had often grown up with very lax oversight from fathers who were busy getting rich, learned the social niceties and how to control the overactive libidos with which so many of them had been blessed.
Besides, Darwin’s methods were not found in any medical textbook. They were his own. And he suspected Barbara Moore would test them to the limit.
While all of his charges had strayed in one way or another, few had done so in quite such a public way, as The Herald had so helpfully reported. To willingly accompany a young man underneath a grandstand populated by thousands of members of high society indicated a level of carnal need at the very highest end of the spectrum.
That had justified him, he felt, in having quoted Moore a price that shocked even him. Moore had made a face, but had signed the contract and written out a check on the spot. The man must be quite desperate with a daughter like Barbara.
Darwin pulled his watch out of his pocket. It was time to examine his newest protégé.
***
In the dim light of the single gas lamp on the wall of the cell, he could make out her form. She lay on a cot, which was the only furniture in the cell other than a small, white porcelain chamber pot. She was covered by a coarse woolen blanket that was the sole protection she had against the dank air of the basement of the old house, chilly even on this warm afternoon. ‘Quite a come down from the Plaza,’ he thought as he closed the peephole.
“Wait outside, Max,” he ordered. “I’ll call for you if I need you, though I think she’ll have been suitably chastened by the cold bath and her nudity.”
He took the keyring from his assistant and opened the door. Barbara stirred at the sound and sat up, wrapping the blanket around her midsection as best she could, given her restraints.
“I want my clothes,” she announced. “I want to go back to the City. You have no right to take them from me and keep me chained and locked up.”
He smiled gently. “Oh, but, I do. Your father has signed you over to me. I am in loco parentis as they say in Latin.”
“You are loco, that’s for sure.”
He sat down on the cot, carefully so as not to collapse the flimsy structure, placing his black medical bag on the floor at his feet. She moved as far away from him as she could. “Barbara, you are not well. Your behavior at Saratoga showed that. I am here to help you. When you are better you can go home.”
“You can’t keep me naked. That isn’t right.”
“I’m a medical doctor. I have to examine you so that I can prescribe the proper program to address your situation.”
“I’m fine,” she protested. “You’re the one who’s sick, keeping me like this.”
He smiled. “You are saying nothing that all the other girls who’ve been in your position haven’t said. Eventually, they all learned how to tame their passions so that they could have a real marriage to a nice young man, not a roll in the hay, literally in your case, with an unsuitable hustler.”
“I love him and he loves me.”
“Barbara, none of this is your fault. It’s the way you were born, but I will help you to overcome that. Now, please stand up so that I can examine you.”
Barbara sat there, pulling the blanket tighter around herself, if such a thing were possible. “I will make this simple for you,” Darwin continued. “Max is standing outside that door. You no doubt remember Max assisting you with your bath?” Barbara looked like she was about to say something, but held her tongue. “I can have him in here to assist with my examination or he can stay outside. Your choice, Barbara.”
Slowly, reluctantly she stood, adjusting the blanket as best she could in her restraints to cover both her breasts and her lower regions. “That was a wise decision,” Darwin said. “Now hand me the blanket.” She shook her head.
“I have to examine you. I’m a doctor. I’ve seen it all before,” he said. And it was indeed true that he had seen his fair share of naked young women during his time running this Institute. That was a delightful benefit of his current occupation, at least as satisfying as the checks that desperate parents like James Moore wrote.
“Barbara, it is necessary that I examine you. If you feel compelled to resist, I am prepared to summon Max to assist. However, if you co-operate, I will remove the restraints. So, which will it be?”
“Bastard!” she hissed. Nevertheless, her epithet notwithstanding, she slowly unwrapped the blanket from around her torso and dropped it onto the cot. Darwin stared at her open-mouthed. She was a picture of youthful beauty and innocence, her pale skin glowing in the soft light. He could see that she was shivering from the cold and from fear.
‘I can see why that Goldman was willing to take considerable risks to have this one,’ Darwin thought. Her breasts were full and succulent, the nipples erect in the chill air. Her belly was taut, her torso swelling out most enticingly to her well-formed hips.
Her hands had just enough freedom of movement to cover her groin. Darwin fumbled with the keyring, selecting the key that unlocked the restraints. “You will find that I am a man of my word, Barbara, for good and bad. I appreciate your cooperation.”
He unlocked the cuffs at her wrists and then bent to release her ankles, placing the metal chains on the floor next to his medical bag, from which he extracted a stethoscope. He rose and placed it in between her breasts, his hand brushing lightly against the supple flesh. “Breathe,” he instructed. He felt her chest rise and fall.
“Turn around, please,” he ordered. She turned slowly. Her ass was divine, two delightful globes, just begging for the cane or the strap, something he was certain her behavior would earn her on more than one occasion during her stay.
He held the stethoscope to her upper back. “Cough!” he ordered. He repeated this twice more, moving the stethoscope to different locations on her rib cage.
“You may turn around,” he advised her. When she was facing him, he delivered his verdict. “Your heart and lungs are fine, my dear. Now, please lie down on your back.”
Reluctantly, she laid down on the cot, her legs pressed together straight in front of her, one hand covering her crotch and the other held tightly to her breasts. Gently, but firmly, he removed her hands. She returned them to her crotch and chest. “Barbara, we had an agreement that you would co-operate. I have kept my part and removed the restraints. You must keep yours. Now put your hands by your sides, please.”
She didn’t move them, so he picked them up and positioned them as he wanted them. This time she left them there. “Thank you,” he said. Then, moving quickly, he knelt beside the cot, grasped one ankle in each hand and pulled her legs apart, bending the knees so that her feet were flat on the surface.
“Please, no, you can’t,” she said.
“I’m afraid I must examine the site that is the root of your difficulties, my dear.” She tried to pull her legs together, but he held her firmly. “Shall I ask Max to come in?”
Barbara shook her head. “Then you will allow me to proceed with my work,” he said. He felt her resistance slackening. He bent over to get a closer look at her genitals. The outer lips were slightly parted. He inhaled the faintly musky scent.
“I have many years of experience with young women such as you, Barbara. I know how easy it is to give in to the feelings that one gets in those special places. I will teach you to control them so that you can be a proper wife and mother.”
He spread the outer lips further, running one finger up the edges to the little bud at the top, which enlarged as he gently stroked it. Barbara lifted her head. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Lie back and relax. I need to gauge your responsiveness to stimuli.” He reached into his medical bag and removed a large wooden object. Barbara stared at it. “You are familiar with these, I take it?” he asked.
She nodded. “Your father told me of the circumstances regarding his dismissal of your chambermaid. Kristina was her name, I believe?” Barbara nodded again. “He wisely destroyed the one you brought to Saratoga with you, but I must observe your reactions for myself.”
Darwin inserted the object into the spot that nature had designed for such things. Barbara moaned softly. He moved it in and out slowly, all the while gently stroking her clitoris.
Then, he pulled the dildo out and examined it, touching the shaft to assess the wetness. “I will call that a 9 on the Darwin scale of arousal. Would you be able to describe your feelings for me, Barbara?”
“It feels nice, like it’s filling me up,” she allowed.
“Would you like me to put it back in?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she replied, a bit out of breath.
He re-inserted the wooden dildo. Barbara moaned as she had when he had first put it in, but louder. He moved it in and out. “Was this what you wanted that young man, Goldman, to do under the stands at Saratoga?”
“Oh, God, yes,” Barbara replied.
He stroked her clitoris with the finger of one hand, while continuing to fuck her with the dildo. He noted that her breathing had become labored. He could feel the tension in her legs and see that her hands were clenched.
“Are you feeling a tingling inside?” he asked. She nodded.
“I want you to give in and let it all out,” he ordered. “I need to observe everything, so I can design the perfect regimen for you.”
“Yes!” Barbara cried. “I will! Oh, my God! Nowwwww!” she cried. Darwin felt her bare legs squeezing his torso hard as she writhed on the cot, finally relaxing and laying there limp, panting for air.
He pulled the dildo out and held it to his nose. “Hmm, yes,” he muttered. “Perhaps a 10,”he remarked, before wiping it on the blanket and returning it to his bag.
He stood, zipped up his bag and rapped thrice at the door. “Thank you Max, I’m done here for now,” he said, as the door opened. Max handed him a dinner tray which he placed beside the cot on which Barbara laid, totally exhausted.
“I think I have a good sense of what we need to work on. We will start bright and early tomorrow morning,” he told her. He locked the door behind him and followed Max up the stairs.
windar
Teller of Tales
The state of medical education in the United States in the years prior to our story was, to say the least, less than rigorous. The Bennett Medical College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery from which James Darwin graduated was a real medical school established in Chicago and chartered by the State of Illinois in 1868. They occupied two rooms and one could obtain an MD in six months without ever having laid hands upon a patient (though one did have to have "good moral character", which James Darwin somehow managed to demonstrate during his time there).
It was far from the only school of its type. There were a hundred similar places in the US at the time, proprietary, for-profit medical schools that dispensed diplomas to anyone who could pay their fees and pass an examination that dealt with theory rather than practice.
That all changed in 1910 with the report published by Dr. Abaraham Flexner under the aegis of the Carnegie Foundation. The report lacerated the state of medical education at a great many of the existing medical schools and recommended a four year curriculum, including two years of basic sciences and two years of practical clinical work. Following the publication of the report, approximately half of the medical schools in the country closed or merged and those remaining adopted the recommendations, which guide medical education to this day. Bennett eventually merged into Loyola University of Chicago, which still trains doctors. The downside of the contraction was that women and Blacks were excluded from most medical schools until more recent times.
At the time of our story, excess sexual urges were genuinely considered a medical problem for both sexes and many doctors devised treatments not all that less extreme than Dr. Darwin's for the "condition". Among them was Dr. John Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, who was a Seventh Day Adventist and ran a sanitarium at which a strict vegetarian diet and a vigorous exercise regimen were prescribed to reduce libido. Chief among the foods provided there were corn flakes.
I have presented one such treatment in my story "Punishment for Pleasure", which I wrote a few years ago https://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/punishment-for-pleasure-a-story-for-alice.7098/
It was far from the only school of its type. There were a hundred similar places in the US at the time, proprietary, for-profit medical schools that dispensed diplomas to anyone who could pay their fees and pass an examination that dealt with theory rather than practice.
That all changed in 1910 with the report published by Dr. Abaraham Flexner under the aegis of the Carnegie Foundation. The report lacerated the state of medical education at a great many of the existing medical schools and recommended a four year curriculum, including two years of basic sciences and two years of practical clinical work. Following the publication of the report, approximately half of the medical schools in the country closed or merged and those remaining adopted the recommendations, which guide medical education to this day. Bennett eventually merged into Loyola University of Chicago, which still trains doctors. The downside of the contraction was that women and Blacks were excluded from most medical schools until more recent times.
At the time of our story, excess sexual urges were genuinely considered a medical problem for both sexes and many doctors devised treatments not all that less extreme than Dr. Darwin's for the "condition". Among them was Dr. John Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, who was a Seventh Day Adventist and ran a sanitarium at which a strict vegetarian diet and a vigorous exercise regimen were prescribed to reduce libido. Chief among the foods provided there were corn flakes.
I have presented one such treatment in my story "Punishment for Pleasure", which I wrote a few years ago https://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/punishment-for-pleasure-a-story-for-alice.7098/
Fossy
SEXPIOGENTUS
One of the best yet Windy! The first piece pf narrative was so evocative of the time, brilliant. As for the second piece, wow so damn hot! Barb was so wonderfully humiliated by word and deed ...
"The site that is the root of your difficulties..." - what a wonderful phrase! And, for sure, we should all have our own scale of arousal!
Great job Windy.
twonines
LIMERICUS
Spot on, Fossy, Windar has excelled himself here.
old slave
FELIS RESPICIENS
Let us not deviate from the exemplary scientific accuracy of CF. The members deserve an explanation of this valuable scale, with the likely behaviours for the spectrum of wayward girls one might encounter.
I must have read that too quickly or too bleary-eyed (still in bed this morning) … I thought it said “Windar has soiled himself.”
In any case, things are getting serious now for Barb.
We invite our readers (with the exception of @montycrusto) to use their imaginations on this matter. Monty can just offer one of his trademark unimaginative limericks,
Doragon
Tribune
Amazing how real scientists are able to perform their work with such clinical distance and indifference.
windar
Teller of Tales
Well Dr. Darwin might do that after completing his examination of Barbara
It's simple-you multiply the moisture content of the dildo by balance in the father's bank account...
By the way, as far as I was able to find, there is no connection between the Bennett Medical College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery and the Bennett of the New York Herald and balloon races. And why did they say Medical College and Medicine? Wouldn't one assume that a Medical College taught Medicine???
Tree fears this could go much deeper!!!
I think they meant to say Medical College of ELECTIVE Medicine and Surgery. They were just ahead of their time in figuring out where the real money was.
I’m afraid to ask where Tree got his medical degree.