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Lesson 28 |
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Patients and doctors |
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What are patients looking for when they visit the doctor? |
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This is a sceptical age, |
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but although our faith in many of the things |
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in which our forefathers fervently believed has weakened, |
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our confidence in the curative properties of the bottle of medicine remains the same as theirs. |
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This modern faith in medicines is proved by the fact |
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that the annual drug bill of the Health Services is mounting to astronomical figures. |
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and shows no signs at present of ceasing to rise. |
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The majority of the patients |
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attending the medical out-patients departments of our hospitals feel that |
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they have not received adequate treatment unless they are able to carry home with them |
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some tangible remedy in the shape of a bottle of medicine, |
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a box of pills, or a small jar of ointment, |
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and the doctor in charge of the department is only too ready to provide them with these requirements. |
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There is no quicker method of disposing of patients |
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than by giving them what they are asking for, |
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and since most medical men in the Health Services are overworked |
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and have little time for offering time-consuming |
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and little-appreciated advice on such subjects as diet, |
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right living, and the need for abandoning bad habits etc., |
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the bottle, the box, and the jar are almost always granted them. |
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Nor is it only the ignorant and ill-educated person |
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who has such faith in the bottle of medicine. |
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It is recounted of Thomas Carlyle |
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that when he heard of the illness of his friend, Henry Taylor, |
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he went off immediately to visit him, |
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carrying with him in his pocket what remained a bottle of medicine |
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formerly prescribed for an indisposition of Mrs. Carlyle's. |
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Carlyle was entirely ignorant of what the bottle in his pocket contained, |
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of the nature of the illness from which his friend was suffering, |
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and of what had previously been wrong with his wife, |
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but a medicine that had worked so well in one form of illness |
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would surely be of equal benefit in another, |
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and comforted by the thought of the help he was bringing to his friend, |
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he hastened to Henry Taylor's house. |
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History does not relate whether his friend accepted his medical help, |
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but in all probability he did. |
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The great advantage of taking medicine is that it makes no demands on the taker |
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beyond that of putting up for a moment with a disgusting taste, |
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and that is what all patients demand of their doctors--to be cured at no inconvenience to themselves. |