THE HUMAN TOUCH IN MEDICINE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 44, 16 November 1925, Page 10

THE HUMAN TOUCH IN MEDICINE

AN AUTHOR’S ADVICE TO DOCTORS “Sleep yourself as deeply as you like in the know-ledge and lore of your craft, but don’t forget the human touch.” This was the message which Major lan Hay Beith (“lan Hay”) conveyed to Guy’s Hospital Medical School in delivering the opening address of the winter session in the Physiology Lecture Theatre. Major Beith said that while he compared character or personality with technical knowledge and ability, neither could be regarded ns a substitute for the other. No force of character, no attractiveness of personality, could ever compensate for ignorance in one’s profession. Personality was not only a useful hut an invaluable appendage to a professional man’s equipment, but it could never constitute the equipment. There was a general and a dangerous tendency in tho world to-day to exploit personality to an absurd degree, to the neglect and detriment of real training and. thorough knowledge. We were living in an ago of advertisement, in an nge where people were tending more and more, to expend their energies not upon putting quality into their goods, but upon thinking out ingenious nnd profitable methods of disposing of their goods. A doctor was above all things a propagandist. To a certain extent he was always playing a part, backing up the resources of science by the art of the skilled advocate; mixing the powder nnd the jam in such proportions that the powder escaped notice, yet achieved its purpose; doing everything, in fact, that was morally justifiable to create, maintain, and increase the moral of tho patient and his confidence in his own chances of speedy recovery. Cheery common sense nnd unprofessional informality did more, to benefit a patient than the whole British pharmacopoeia.