Once upon a time, in a certain town, there lived a doctor. He was a good, kind man and very hard-working. At any time of the day or night he was always ready to go to the bedside of a sick person, or to help if there was an accident. Everyone liked him and trusted him and people always went to him wherever there was anything wrong with them.
But the years went past, and in the end, old age and hard work wore the doctor out and he began to lose his memory. This made him do rather silly things sometimes. When people noticed this they did no go to him any more when they were ill.
"He may give us the wrong medicine," they said, and they were afraid.
The good old doctor noticed that people did not come to him as they used to do but he did not understand why. So he asked.
"Why does no one come to me now? I used to have a lot of patients." Nobody wanted to tell him the real reason because they didn't want to hurt the good old man, so they said.
"You have cured all your patients. There is no one sick now." The doctor was pleased when he heard that, and went away quite happy. |
