The Doctor in Fiction.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 5, 31 January 1912, Page 56

The Doctor in Fiction.

The novelist never seems to have the lightest knowledge of the professional medical life (according to Dr. Squire Sprigge, who raises the question in “■Cornhill"). He is ready enough to credit the members of the medical profession with many shining virtues and equally ready to darken their refutation with calumny, the unfortunate result being to leave upon the public mind the impression tliat the average medical man is not an average member of society. The idea which the public might well derive from reading many novels is that to call in a doctor is an extraordinarily fluky proceeding, as the medical profession is divided sharply into heroes and knaves. The heroes lead a strenuous life, succouring the sick in desperate circumstances and refusing fees; operating at the briefest notice when a hair's breadth to the right or left in the making of an incision would be certain -death to the patient. The knaves murder, cozen, and keep bogus sanatoriums. They vivisect for pleasure, their humanity is dead within their breasts, and they pass existences that are a standing reproach to the law of the land. Now undoubtedly either sort of description of the medical life, whether the roseate glow of eulogy or the green cast of detraction is employed, does no good to anyone. As far as the public is concerned it cannot be useful that they should have doubts whether their doctor is a saint or a sinner, a knave or a hero. Medical men, for their part, may smile at errors in the medical details of novels, but they are uneasy under indiscriminate laudation of the nobility of their careers, and grow positively restive at some of the allegations concerning their criminal habits.