NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 40, 26 November 1937, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

ACTOR ON DOCTOR'S DUTY. “It is the duty of you who embark on this wonderful profession to eliminate fear,” said Sir Seymour Hicks, in addressing students a$ the medical school of Westminster Hospital. “It is fear which opens for us the door of your consulting room. A small number of patients may he callous, or appear so, hut most are concealing, or attempting to conceal, fear. You cannot imagine what a tremendous thing it is to find your doctor creating for you a cheerful atmosphere. Will you be very definite when examining and diagnosing, even if you are wrong ? And small-talk in the consulting room is dreadful for us. We go there very worried, and we are not there from choice, however attractive the doctor may be. We would like gentle straightforwardness, the truth wrapped up in hope.” HEARTH AND HOME. “I am an advocate of the open fireplace,” said Lord Horder, the eminent physician, in a recent address. “I do not say this without clue knowledge of the various allegations made against the coal-burning fireplace. I know all about the uneconomic features it possesses. I know all about the heat generated going to some extent up the chimney instead of radiating into the room. I know all about the smoke, too. But the open grate possesses the psychological merit—not shared by any other means of heat—of burning with an ever-changing flame. That forms a considerable contribution to mental satisfaction which is part of what is meant hv comfort. Wc get rid of these lovely will-o’-the-wisps that mean so much to us, when we substitute synthetic heating for the more primitive hearth, and then endeavour to reintroduce them by means of a mechanised flicker and so we play a little game with ourselves. We deceive ourselves and we are not deceived. Wc substitute for a thing ol deep psychological value a trick which, when all is said, merely reminds us how clever we can sometimes be. It is much wiser to direct cleverness into tliosc channels which can conserve our natural pleasures for us than to manufacture artificial pleasures which leave us unsatisfied.”