It is well known that the medical profession is constantly on the
alert for any new discoveries that will benefit suffering humanity;
and I am told that they welcome suggestions, even from laymen, that
may be helpful in achieving this end. One of the habitual aversions
that people have to clinics and hospitals is their arbitrary rules
and regulations, in complying with which patients feel that they are
obliged practically to relinquish all control over both body and mind.
Indeed I once heard a woman remark that she looked on these places as
she did on a jail. Doubtless this is an altogether wrong impression;
but nevertheless it prevails. We must assume that the first concern of
every physician is that his patients have not only the best care but a
complacent mind; and one way of helping to accomplish this desire is
for surgeons to invent some substitute for adhesive tape. And I wonder
if clinics and hospitals intend always to keep castor oil at the head
of their diet list.
Furthermore if physicians were to establish a more mutual and candid
relationship with their patients, and authorize nurses and other
hospital attachés to treat them as rational human beings, possessed of
some knowledge of their own feelings--at least to the extent of knowing
whether they are getting better or worse--it might help to remedy a
condition which I once heard an eminent physician term “an emergent
deficiency.”
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
A Table of Contents has been added for convenience.