VIIHIPPOCRATES ON MODERN DOCTORS
“What did you say about a hip-pocket?” queried the city editor suspiciously. “I want a drink as much as any man, but since prohibition arrived no camel has had anything on me. I believe in respecting the law even if—”
“I didn’t say anything about a hip-pocket,” I cut in. “I said it might be a good scheme to interview old Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, and find out what he thinks about modern doctors and surgeons and professional etiquette and whether times have improved any since he was in active practice a couple of thousand years ago. What do you think of the idea?”
“Go to it,” responded the C. E., “but be careful he doesn’t try to charge you ‘for professional advice.’ Make him understand that we’re doing the favor, not he. He ought to be glad of the free advertising. He’ll say at first he doesn’t want any publicity—it is unethical. See if he doesn’t. These doctors are all alike. I know ’em.”
Much to my surprise the city editor’s cynicalprediction was verified by my victim’s opening remarks. “You want me to talk forpublication, young man?” said the Father of Medicine. “You’re sure you’re not a representative of an eastern publishing house who has been authorized to place a few copies of a new encyclopedia with a selected number of the most prominent citizens, absolutely free of charge, on payment of a dollar down and five dollars a month for twenty years?”
Somewhat mystified, I replied in the negative.
“And you’re not demonstrating from purely philanthropic motives—the only charge being for packing and postage—a new tonic guaranteed to make the baldest pate blossom into a Paderewski?”
“No, sir, I’m not an agent of any kind. I have nothing to sell.”
“You are certain you are not promoting the sale of a new absolutely talk-proof safety razor for married men whose wives insist on conversing while they are trying to shave themselves? Or a new hip-pocket Testament holding one pint? Or a machine for manufacturing cigars at home, in anticipation of the next Great Reform? Or a self-spelling typewriter for business college graduates? You are not selling stock in a gold mine in Iceland at fifty cents par today, but price to be raised positively nextMonday at ten o’clock to a dollar and a half, all shares guaranteed non-assessable and non-returnable? You are not the agent for a combination snow-shovel and lawn-mower, especially designed for the North American climate, transposable at a moment’s notice? You are not selling diamond-studded coupon clippers for profiteers or self-finding collar buttons, or—”
“My dear sir, I have nothing to sell at all. I am a reporter and I want—”
“Oh, a reporter? Well, why didn’t you say so at first, instead of causing all this confusion and waste of breath? I’ve been so bothered with agents of every sort lately that I can’t sleep nights. I told one that the other day and he pulled a bottle out of his bag and tried to sell me an infallible cure for insomnia. I resolved not to let another one into my house. But you’re a reporter, eh? That’s a refreshing novelty around here. Come in.
“But you must know that I never talk for publication. I have never done such a thing in my entire professional career. It would be entirely contrary to the ethics of my sacred calling. Somebody might say I was trying to advertise myself. You know doctors can’t be too careful. We never advertise. We may occasionally consent, under pressure, to the publication of an item in the society column sayingthat ‘Dr. Theophilus Sawbones of 52896 Arnica Avenue has returned after a two weeks’ trip to Atlantic City and resumed his practice.’ But that isn’t advertising. That’s news. You never see a surgeon, for instance, descending to the low commercial plane of your merchants, and announcing in a display advertisement: ‘Cut rates all this week at Dr. Carvem’s. Now is the time to get that appendix cut out. All operations marked down. Special bargains in tonsils.’
“No, sir. We have an exalted code of ethics in our profession, I am happy to say, dating from the time when I founded the practice of medicine. But if you are sure a few timely remarks from me will not be misinterpreted and regarded as an attempt on my part to get into the limelight, I am at your service to the extent of about a column and a half, offered for acceptance at your regular rates, to be run next reading matter.”
“I am certain, doctor,” I responded, “that the world will attribute no self-promoting motives to one enjoying your long and honorable reputation. Do you note many changes in the practice of medicine since the days when you were in the harness?”
“Well,” responded Hippocrates as he thoughtfully stroked his long beard, “thereseem to be more different kinds of doctors nowadays than we had in 400 B. C. We didn’t know anything about specialists in our time. We were not merely general practitioners; we were universal practitioners.
“Suppose, for instance, a prosperous citizen of Athens had the gout, indigestion, corns, heart murmur, rheumatism, torpidity of the liver and clergyman’s sore throat—seven ailments in all. He sent for me and I treated all his diseases at the same time. While he had a combination of diseases, we knew any good doctor would understand the combination.
“I felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, and told him he was working too hard—just as one of your modern doctors would do. It always pleases a prosperous citizen to be told that he is working too hard—and we aim to please. If I thought he would like a trip somewhere, I recommended a run over to Rome during the Coliseum season. They used to have some mighty good shows at the Coliseum. If he preferred to take his vacation at home, then I recommended a trip for his wife. I told him not to eat so much and to take more exercise, and to cut out the worry, and then collected my fee of two drachmas, and went on to the next vic—I mean, the next patient.
“But take that same prosperous citizen today.How many specialists would he have to call in before he could consider his case properly attended to? Seven diseases, seven specialists, you say? Oh, more than that. First thing he’d have to send for the primary diagnostician, if he wished to do it in thoroughly up-to-date style. Well, the primary diagnostician would come in to find out, first, what was the matter with him. He looks the patient all over and takes flash-light pictures of his interior, makes a card index of all the things the matter with him and then calls in his stenographer and dictates a circular letter to a collection of specialists, asking them to drop around at their leisure and confirm his diagnoses. And dotheyproceed then to treat the patient? Not for a minute. They are the secondary diagnosticians. Each has his specialty and wouldn’t dream of encroaching on any other specialist’s territory. The gout man looks only for gout—and he finds what he is looking for. The indigestion expert does the same—and it can’t escape his eagle eye. It’s the same all down the line.
“When the seven secondary diagnosticians have finished their job the patient is presented with seven neatly-inscribed charts, showing the general plan and location of his various troubles—and seven courteously worded communicationsbeginning with precisely the same words: ‘For professional services to date.’
“Now it’s time to call in the specialists who administer the treatment. Seven more of ’em. Why, nowadays the house of a rich man who’s got something the matter with his insides looks like the convention hall of the American Medical Association during a well-attended session. And that’s not all. You not only have to have a different doctor for each disease, but a whole lot of brand-new diseases we never heard of in my time have been invented. Back in the old days in Athens there were only about a dozen ailments a fellow could acquire. If he escaped these he never had to call in a doctor. But today, as any specialist will tell you, there are about fifty-seven varieties of throat trouble alone. You can have eighty-six different things the matter with your liver, while the various kinds of indigestion, plain and fancy, would fill a book. In our time, too, we did mighty little tinkering with the human frame with tools and things. We knew about the appendix, but we failed to perceive its commercial possibilities. We thought it had been put there for some wise purpose—but it didn’t occur to us that it might be a financial one. The price of a modern appendicitis operation would have supported oneof our old Greek physicians in luxury for three years.
“It was the same with tonsils. We’d as soon have thought of cutting off a man’s tongue as taking out his tonsils. Every young doctor had to take an oath—theHippocraticoath,Icalled it—that he would give everybody the benefit of his services without regard to money. Nowadays if doctors take the oath I presume a good many of them keep their fingers crossed. I agree that when a doctor is called out of his bed in the middle of the night, to treat an old fellow who is suffering from nothing except fatty degeneration of the pocketbook, it’s quite a temptation to relieve him of a substantial share of that trouble. Some folk think they aren’t getting full attention unless they are charged enough to make them feel it in the pocket nerve. Increased wages of workingmen are bound to enlarge the number of millionaire medicos.”
“So, you think, Doctor, the practice of medicine has become somewhat commercialized since your day?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. I did not wish to reflect on my successors. That would not be professional. I’m simply sorry that back in 400 B. C. we were not alive to our opportunities. Think of our allowing Croesus, the richest manthat ever lived, to go around with his appendix intact! Why, I sat up with him all one night when he had acute inflammation of the imagination and thought he saw pink Egyptian crocodiles crawling up the window-shades, and only charged him two dollars!
“No, understand me. I’m not finding fault with the twentieth century doctors. I’m only envious of their opportunities. Your modern doctor dashes around town in his automobile and calls on twenty patients a day. I had an old ox team, non-self-starting, that couldn’t take the smallest hill on high and had a maximum speed on the level of two miles an hour. While I was attending a patient at one end of Athens a patient at the other end had time to get well without my assistance. That was discouraging to any young fellow just as his practice and professional beard were beginning to grow. And nowadays they tell me you have allopaths, and homeopaths and osteopaths—but you must remember that all paths lead to the grave.”
“Why is that last joke just like you, Doctor?” I interposed in self-defense.
“I give it up. Why is it?”
“Because it dates from at least 400 B. C.”
And the look Hippocrates gave in returnmade me thankful he wasn’t my family doctor. I knew he would rejoice to write me a prescription of ten grains of strychnine, three times a day, to be taken before meals.