THE SICK DOCTOR.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 246, 17 October 1925, Page 21

THE SICK DOCTOR.

SOME TYPES. (By PERITUS) "And when from stress of overwork you're laid upon the shelf, Tour sympathising patients say, 'physician, heal thyself.' " I remember reading that an old doctor in a provincial town always replied to the conventional "How do you do?" by "I am invariably well, thank you, I have access to many good drugs." It is true that medical practitioners seldom contract disease by infection. In the beginning, by the strain of study and the normal life of a medical student, the physically unfit are mostly weeded out, that is, the weak and ailing, and doetors,'generally, start with a moderately good constitution. The "will to be well" is part of the professional stock in trade, is really an esential in practice, and is, I believe, some protection. The public faith in a man who shows fear (beyond ordinary precaution), or frequent invalidism, is small, but, nevertheless a delicate looking doctor who is active and capable, is often liked, because it is assumed that personal acquaintance with physical weakness begets sympathy for others and this sympathy may be missing in a man immune, or apparently immune, from common ills.

At one time the "sporting doctor" was immensely popular, and this was a reaction from the popularity of the black-robed physician who somehowsuggested the undertaker and dark rooms with the blinds down. To-day, the studious, or studious-looking, man is in the ascendant and the gentle bedside manner has yielded to a rather wooden stiffness, added to a manner of rapid decision. The effect of this is supposed to be Tonic. A threatened patient says, "Good gracious mc, I hope not!" and decides to get well. lam quite sure that the doctor who unfortunately has a "cold" should remain at home until all cough, hoarseness and nasal obstructions had disappeared. ■ The doctor who says, ''By dear Badam, you really bust stay 'id bed," is not attractive, neither is he cheering, nor very useful. Two of the best surgeons this country has ever had were chronic invalids, but few outside the profession knew it. The public is inclined to be hard upon doctors who take alcohol or other drugs, but in many cases the doctors feel themselves slipping from tho effects of constitutional disease, and the calls of the daily routine demanding constant response they havo recourse to sedative or stimulant, and afterwards sometimes drift into the hopeless position of addicts. Fortunately they are .few. Every doctor has not that invaluable quality of resourceful courage, the courage to face risks, when risk is inevitable, or to bear personal pain bravely. Indeed, nurses always declare that doctors make bad patients. I once at Guysaw a young doctor who had an abscessed forefinger on the left hand. The abscess needed opening. He came to a marble slab beside ine, with a lancet in his right hand. Laying the ghastly looking digit on the slab, he gripped his lancet, took a long breath and—found the slab uncomfortable and crossed the room to another similar table there. The patient finger was posed for operation. There was a squaring of shoulders, a firm planting of the feet, two~ heavy sighs and— the light was not good enough. He returned to the place he had first decided upon. Here he made several nourishes with the lancet and imaginary cuts on the reposing finger, pressed the back of the blade here and there to find a really comfortable spot for incision, but it all ended in the lancet being returned to its case and the student going off to seek a kindly nurse who would apply a hornelv poultice, or, perhaps, do the lancet deed herself. I wfear mc that doctors tell many "win* fibs" rather than confess to the |i.;i'lic\that they are confined to room or lied by sickness. "Say lam at•.ciiding an important case," or "the doctor is not at home for a. few days," or "tell them you will let them know immediately I return," are common instructions to the wives, daughters, and servants of doctors too shy to admit they are mortal and not exempt from illness.'

Once the doctor is really sick and perforce in the hands of a professional colleague, he is apt to be argumentative and critical about the treatment. Well he knows that "to have himself for a doctor is to have a fool for a patient," but, to him, the attending physician always seems "a bit of an ass," and he cdnfides to the nurse how easily he has dealt with disease in his own practice and hpw much less his patients suffered than he is now suffering.

"Peggy," a ship's surgeon of my acquaintance, professed to have had nearly every known disease of his day, ancj, would rest his wooden leg on a nearby chair, and sitting, on the patient's bed, recount at length all the symptoms he remembered to have experienced when —like his present patient—he had so and so. "Well." he would conclude, "that was_ years ago. and here I am still. Don't you worry. My doctor was not as good as yours.'"

Tn my experience doctors and chemists have three or four favourite drugs, and like to pop their own personal prescriptions built around one or other of these. C'hem-'sts have a far greater belief in the selective action of drugs than doctors, probably because chemists know le«s nf the physiological barriers and complicated action of internal secretions which render the action of any drug an affair of more or less doubt, not perhaps as to its definite effect, but as to the manner in which the effect will be accomplished.

When a surgeon needs tho services of another surgeon his abandonment to treatment is usually confident and f'omolete. He will waggle a finger until, the anaesthetic places the finger beyond voluntary control, or keep eyelids stiffly raised above pathetic eyes, but he will make no conditions, avoids conversation, breathes doeplv. and demonstrates absolute faith in his colleagues no matter what his thoughts may be. In convalescence he is often a terror to the nurses.

Back at work again he makes light ef his patient's fears, and "that's nothing! Why, when I was on the* table, etc.," becomes almost a formula. I have noticed that when time permits a sick doctor will show a preference for another of whose reputation he lias heard, but of whose skill he has no direct or personal evidence. Distance lends enchantment even to medical qualifications. The doctor who has never experienced serious illness, who is always brisk and "fit," is cheerful compa'jy and infuses faith and hope, but he hp.s less sympathy, less intuitive perception, less consciousness of suffering in others, than the man who hag had some and nave in what has been called Nature's beneflcient warning-—pais.