Along with the similarly vague group of "ministers" (123), this group of "the doctors" in town visit Emily Grierson's house to persuade her to relinquish her father's corpse (124).
In The Reivers the country doctor whom Lucius sees in Parsham is "an iron-gray man" at least sixty years old (185). His white shirt and black coat are both unclean, and he "smells like something [that] isn't just alcohol" (185). According to Butch, it's ether. Doctors used ether as an anesthetic, but it was also ab-used as an addictive drug. For all his shortcomings, the narrative treats this doctor - and his 35-year-old memory of a visit to a Memphis brothel - kindly.
This is the doctor in The Hamlet who inspects Mink Snopes after his suicide attempt. (This very minor character is probably also the same "doctor" as the one who examines Cotton in the story "The Hound," but since Faulkner has changed 'Cotton' to 'Mink' when he revised that story for inclusion in the novel, it seems appropriate to enter this doctor as a different character too.)
"The doctor" in Absalom! treats Charles E. S-V. Bon after the fight at "the negro ball" (164). (In the various fictions there are three named Jefferson doctors who appear more than once - Habersham in the early life of the town; Peabody and Alford in the 20th century - but there are also over a dozen doctors who are never named.
There are over a dozen Jefferson physicians in the fictions, but the doctor in the story "Uncle Willy" is invented by Willy as a way to get his rich sister in Texas to buy him a car. According to Willy's letter to her, this doctor prescribes a car as a way to save Willy from having "to walk back and forth to the store" in his fragile health (235). According to the narrator, Willy wants the car in order to get to the moonshine stills in the hills outside Jefferson and to the brothels in Memphis.
"The doctor" - a phrase which suggests the town has only one doctor - appears three times in "Miss Zilphia Gant": twice to treat Zilphia, and once to treat her mother (372, 375, 380). On his first visit he tells Mrs. Gant that Zilphia "would have to have companionship, to play with children of her own age and out-of-doors" (372). (In the various fictions there are three named Jefferson doctors who appear more than once - Habersham in the early life of the town; Peabody and Alford in the 20th century - but there are also over a dozen doctors who are never named.
The doctor who works at Hoke's sawmill appears anonymously in "Lion" and by name, as Doctor Crawford, in Go Down, Moses. He's not a veterinarian, but when in the short story Boon shows up "just before daylight," and "drags him out of bed like a sack of meal," he goes to the hunting camp and works on the wounded Lion (196). In "Lion" he also treats Boon, and in the novel treats both Boon and Sam.
This is the Jefferson doctor in "Dry September" whom Minnie Cooper's friends send for when she suffers a nervous breakdown. He is "hard to locate" (181). (In the various fictions there are three named Jefferson doctors who appear more than once - Habersham in the early life of the town; Peabody and Alford in the 20th century - but there are also over a dozen doctors who are never named.
This is the doctor whom Lucas Beauchamp goes to get when Zack Edmonds’s wife has trouble in labor in Go Down, Moses; he arrives too late to prevent her death. (In the various fictions there are three named Jefferson doctors who appear more than once - Habersham in the early life of the town; Peabody and Alford in the 20th century - but there are also over a dozen doctors who are never named.
The "doctor" who examines Cotton after he is brought to jail in "The Hound" is not named, or individualized in any way (163). (In the various fictions there are three named Jefferson doctors who appear more than once - Habersham in the early life of the town; Peabody and Alford in the 20th century - but there are also over a dozen doctors who are never named.
