The Patient Observer | Page 5

almost with a wink, as if he were to say, "This is a game, old man,
but I suppose it's as honest a way of earning one's living as most ways."
While he writes out his directions, he comments: "There is nothing the
matter with you, and you will take this powder three times a day with
your meals. It is just a case of too much tobacco supplemented by a
fertile fancy. Rub your chest with this before you go to bed and avoid
draughts. And what you need is not medicine but the active agitation
for two hours every day of the two legs which the Lord gave you, and
which you now employ exclusively for making your way to and from
the railway station. This is for your digestion, and you can have it put
up in pills or in liquid form, according to taste. And the next time you
feel inclined to call me in, think it over in the course of a ten-mile
walk."
Now this may be cheering if somewhat mixed treatment, but it has
nothing of that sympathy which the ailing body craves. The case is
much worse if your smooth-faced physician happens to be a personal
friend. The indifference with which such a man will listen to the most
pitiful recital of physical suffering is extraordinary. You may be out on
the golf links together, and he has just made an exceptionally fine iron
shot from a bad lie and in the face of a lively breeze. He is naturally
pleased, and you take courage from the situation. "By the way, Smith,"
you say, "I have been feeling rather queer for a day or two. There is a
gnawing sensation right here, and when I stoop----" "That must have
been 180 yards," he says, "but not quite on the green. You don't chew
your food enough. Take a glass of hot water before your breakfast--and
you had better try your mashie!" Of course, no one likes to talk shop,
especially on the golf links. Still you think, if you were a physician and
you had a friend who had a gnawing sensation, you would be more
considerate. After the game he lights his cigar and orders you not to
smoke if the pain in your chest is really what you have described it. "In
me," he says, cheerfully, "you get a physician and a horrible example
for one price."
But there is one thing that this impressionistic school of medicine has
in common with the other kind. Both types are faithful to the funereal
type of waiting-room which is one of the signs of the trade. It is a room

in which all the arts of the undertaker have seemingly been called upon
to bring out the full possibilities of the average New York brownstone
"front-parlour." I have often tried to decide whether, in a doctor's
waiting-room, night or day was more conducive to thoughts of the
grave. At night a lamp flickers dimly in one corner of the long room,
and the shadows only deepen those other shadows which lie on the
ailing spirit. But this same darkness mercifully conceals the long line of
ash-coloured family portraits in gold frames, the ash-coloured carpet
and chandelier, and the hideous aggregation of ash-coloured couches
and chairs which make up the daylight picture. Why doctors' reception
rooms should always so strongly combine the attractiveness of a
popular lunch-room on a rainy day with the quiet domestic atmosphere
of a county jail, I have never been able to find out, unless the object is
to reduce the patient to such a horrible state of depression that the mere
summons to enter the doctor's presence makes one feel very much
better already. There are times when to be told that one has pneumonia
or an incipient case of tuberculosis must be a relief after an hour spent
in one of those dreadful ante-chambers.
The literature in a physician's waiting-room is not exhilarating. Usually,
there is an extensive collection of periodicals four months old and over.
From this I gather that physicians' wives and daughters are persistent
but somewhat deliberate readers of current literature. The sense of age
about the magazines on a doctor's table is heightened by the absence of
the front and back covers. The only way of ascertaining the date of
publication is to hunt for the table of contents. That, however, is a task
which few able-bodied men in the prime of life are equal to, not to say
a roomful of sick people, nervous with anticipation. Most patients
under such circumstances set out courageously, but only to lose
themselves in the first half-dozen pages of the advertising section. Yet
the result is by no means harmful. There is something about the
advertising agent's