Chapter II: Part 2

The next I knew I was back in my room looking drowsily up into the anxious faces of my family who assured me that it was “all over.”

“No,” I said--“they’ve just sent for me; I have to go and be operated on.” At that I closed my eyes and slept again. I afterwards learned that the kidney required a great deal of excavating and curetting, and that I had been on the operating table nearly two hours.

MY ENCOUNTER WITH ADHESIVE TAPE

My first experience in having the wound dressed was one of the high-lights of the whole occasion--one that requires no straining of the memory to recall. It was indeed a masterpiece of brutality that well deserves to be recorded in medical history; and I remember it as the outstanding instance where my rights and feelings as a patient were asserted with loud spontaneity, in language more forceful than polite.

“I have a happy surprise for you,” the nurse greeted me that morning, with a roguish twinkle in her eye; and presently one of the house doctors came in, followed by a nurse pushing a “tea-cart” loaded with bandages, bottles and a wicked looking assortment of probing instruments. He set immediately to work removing my swathings, and when he got down to the criscross network of adhesive tape he carefully peeled up one of the corners, then without the slightest warning he suddenly _ripped the whole thing off_, carrying with it, as I supposed, all the skin, with the kidney and half of my insides adhering to it.

“You * * * damned brute!” I exploded. I added much more to the same purpose; but that, for the moment, was all the satisfaction I got. His calloused soul had probably been excoriated many times before. He merely smiled and inquired if it hurt! Ever since then the mere thought of adhesive tape makes me shudder.

From five to eight different physicians, including both the Mayo brothers, visited me daily. Though I was not a patient of Doctor Charles Mayo, he called on me regularly, chatted pleasantly for a few moments, and always left with a word of cheer.

While my progress was constantly reported to be normal, on the ninth day I began to realize that some strange thing had “got” me--something was certainly going wrong. The drainage tubes had been removed, my incision was almost healed, both kidneys were said to be functioning regularly, my temperature was reported normal (though I knew it was not), and I was told that all blood tests and examinations indicated that I was on the highway to recovery. Still I protested that something had me in its deadly grip, and I began to be alarmed. I complained to the nurse, who said I was only tired and needed sleep. I complained to every doctor that came in, and each in turn, as if they had all rehearsed together, said it was “only natural”; and every time I expostulated with Doctor Will he good-naturedly turned the matter aside with some joke. Once he said that if the fire alarm were to ring, I’d be the first patient to jump out the window.

While they all seemed disposed to listen to me with that kindly forbearance usually shown to a talkative old lady in a high class private sanitarium for feeble-minded, nobody was seriously impressed. There was no use trying to argue with anyone; they simply listened tolerantly as long as it amused me to talk. Indeed the harassment of my body and mind was such that I sometimes wondered if I had become an inmate instead of a patient.

They said the records showed I was getting well, and that’s all there was to it. Whatever I said or however I felt seemed not to alter the purely scientific fact that my condition was normal.

There are certain reactions that customarily follow certain operations; and in common practice the patient is not supposed to develop any complications not on the regular calendar. The signposts were all set indicating my lines of recovery, and all I had to do was to keep within bounds and follow directions. But some deadly microbe having intervened to upset their calculations, I was unable to eat a mouthful of food, or to adjust my mental and physical reactions to the prescribed order of things. In other words, theoretically I was getting well, but practically I was becoming a physical wreck.

About this time I received a call one afternoon from the pastor of a church in the town, who having read in the local newspaper that I was from Boston probably jumped to the conclusion that I must be in need of spiritual aid. He was a soft-spoken, amiable, benevolent appearing man, and regretted to find me laid so low. Seeing that I was too sick to indulge in much general conversation he very considerately came at once to the point and asked if I were a believer. When I assured him that I was, he inquired if I felt prepared for any eventuality.

“My friend,” said I, “no one has a more profound veneration for your cloth than I have, and you show the true Christian spirit in coming to see me; but I am decidedly dubious about death-bed repentance. Religion, it seems to me, is something that should be acquired and practiced in health, not in sickness. A soldier who has been a worthless slacker in health can be of little service to his general when he lies at the point of death. This last moment contrition makes salvation too easy to be genuine.”

His answer was that those who came late to the vineyard received the same pay as the ones who came earlier; but my mind was too muddled to comprehend how this applied to those who remained away till they were too ill or decrepit to be of any service at all; and having delivered my little sermon I was not disposed to argue the matter any further.

“My dear brother,” he said at length, “nothing is more uncertain than life. You are making a brave fight, but if by some hard decree of fate you should be called to your final accounting, do you feel that you are prepared to meet your--”

“Yes, I feel quite prepared,” said I, and without stopping to realize how it might shock his religious sensibilities I added--“But if you saw a man in a pasture running for a fence with a raging bull close at his heels there wouldn’t be much use stopping him to inquire if he were prepared for the consequences in case he stumbled.”

A few days later, though my head still reeled and I felt the slowly increasing ravages of some sort of poisoning, I became restless for a change of environment. The hospital rooms were equipped with an electrical signaling instrument that clicked busily night and day, and nearly drove me mad. Then came Christmas Eve, with a group of noisy merry-makers parading up and down the corridors, singing Christmas carols and hallelujah songs. It was after visitors’ hours, and my night nurse having gone out, perhaps to join in the festivities, I lay there conjuring up melancholy thoughts, and contrasting the wretchedness of that night with the happiness of former times. Whether it was the peculiar nature of my illness or what, I cannot say, but Christmas music seemed utterly out of tune with my situation, and I can recall nothing that ever made me so blue, either before or after.

At length Doctor Will submitted to my entreaties, and so they bundled me up, put me onto a stretcher and took me in an ambulance down to the Kahler hospital, where I was placed on the convalescent floor. This brought me more conveniently near my family, who were living at the Kahler hotel, in the same building with the hospital. For the first two days I was reduced to one nurse, who did twenty-hour duty; that is, she was off from two till six P. M., and during this interval various members of my family took turns at entertaining me by trying to convince me that the doctors, nurses and everybody else knew more than I did. Now that I was listed among the convalescents, they couldn’t understand what made me persist in being so stubborn about getting well. Indeed doctors, nurses, friends and relatives all boosted me along and although I had lost nearly thirty pounds--mostly from my face, it seemed--they all insisted that I was improving rapidly and “looking fine.” Several letters and telegrams came from friends congratulating me on my rapid recovery, and everybody seemed jubilant, except me.

“Where do they all get their glad news?” I asked. “It’s the only information I have of any improvement. Don’t try to fool yourselves or me--I’m _sick_! Call it stubbornness or whatever you will, but I tell you, something has _got_ me!”

Every blood test and every examination in the regular technical routine showed me to be perfectly normal; and yet, though I strained every nerve and muscle to justify these cheerful views, I was still conscious of the gradually tightening coils of some deadly venom. But the physicians still refused to take my complaints seriously; and for the life of me I couldn’t explain just how I felt. I simply knew that something had gone wrong, and that I was steadily losing ground in an unequal fight. About the only sensation I could describe was that I felt a constant whirling in my head; and the skin on my head and face felt like a tight-fitting leather mask. I ate nothing and slept very little, except under morphine. Whenever anyone spoke to me or looked at me I felt an impulse to burst out crying. I was assured, however, that all this was a perfectly natural result of the operation.

About this time I developed an excruciating pain in my right hip, which admitted of no comfort, day or night; and when the orthopedic specialist had probed deep into the hip joint and drawn off whatever he could find--which wasn’t much--I discovered that this, also, was a natural consequence of the operation. I learned (indirectly) that I might perhaps have a stiff hip joint the remainder of my life, but they advised me it were better not to worry about it, seeing that it was not an uncommon result of a kidney operation. Unable to figure out what communication a lacerated kidney on the left side could have with a stiff hip on the opposite side, I asked the nurse; but for all I learned I might as well have asked the orderly. So I gave it up--as you have to do with all hospital problems that you attempt to solve by questioning those in attendance.

To draw me off the subject my new nurse declared that my worst trouble was a bad case of the “grunts”; and when I reported this to Doctor Will, with the suggestion that he add it to my list of symptoms, he passed it over with the usual remark that it was “only natural.” Whatever I did, or said, or felt, or thought, seemed not to concern anyone, because it was always perfectly natural; indeed it seemed as if I were the most perfectly normal and natural patient in the whole institution.

THE ATMOSPHERE OF DISSIMULATION

I sometimes wondered what there is about the atmosphere of a hospital that makes everybody prevaricate. If you ask what your temperature is you get an evasive or dishonest answer; if you ask a civil question about yourself, or anybody, or anything whatsoever, they all--including your own people--seem leagued together in a solemn compact to deceive you. And they justify their deceit on the ground that truthful answers are “bad for the morale of the patient,” who is supposed to submit to everything without question, obey all orders without objection, and interfere with no local procedure. You hire the doctor, suffer all the torments, and pay all the bills; yet you are given but little occasion to feel that you are in any other respect regarded as a human entity. You are merely a patient--known in hospital parlance by the number on the door of your room. If you ask an intelligent question about your own condition, the answer makes you feel as if you were prying into their affairs. If you are feverish and irritable, and feel anxiety and suspicion because you are being obviously deceived, you must content yourself with believing that your attendants think they know better than you about your condition and what is good for you.

The first night at the Kahler hospital, my nurse on retiring said she was a light sleeper, and to call her when I wanted anything in the night. She would get up at seven and go to breakfast. Under a strong opiate I slept fairly well through the latter part of the night, and waking a little before seven, with a throbbing hip, and parched mouth and throat, I attempted to wake her for a glass of water (her bed was behind a screen across the room).

“Miss Page!” I called in a loud whisper. No answer. Then louder--“Miss _Page_!” Still no answer.... “Miss Page, did you say you were a light sleeper?” About that time I felt like sneezing; and, I thought, “if I can put this over strong it will surely bring her to.” So I drew in a tremendous inhalation and let out a blast that seemed to shake the room. When the reverberations had died away I listened, and the death-like silence gave me a quaky feeling.

Becoming alarmed, I reached for the telephone on the stand beside my bed and asked the operator to ring my bell vigorously, as I couldn’t wake my nurse. The ensuing clatter sounded like a fire alarm.

“My God, the woman’s dead!” I thought. When I could stand the noise and suspense no longer I cut in and called to the operator--“Send someone up quick; there’s a dead nurse in my room!”

In a short time there was a rush of feet coming along the corridor, then the door was opened, the lights flashed on and several excited people ran in.

“Behind the screen!” I said. They all scurried across to the scene of the supposed fatality. But the bed was empty! Half an hour later the nurse came in smiling. “I got up early,” she said, “and slipped out while you were asleep. Did you miss me?”

We now approach the scenes that bordered narrowly on tragedy. Strangely enough I had had much to do with tragedies the past year. I read twenty-one of them by Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, but little did I dream how near I was to becoming the central figure in a tragic drama with a modern hospital setting.

A couple of days or so after the nurse episode Dr. Braasch came to see me. He said he was making a special study of my case, and for some time he listened attentively while I endeavored to explain how I felt. For the first time I was encouraged to find that I had finally impressed someone with the idea that all was not going well. With the parting remark that he would call again in a few hours, he went out, leaving me in a state of wonderment as to what the next move would be. A little later, when Doctor Will made his customary morning call, he talked at unusual length about the operation. He said his first impression on seeing the infected kidney was to remove it; but on second thought, and acting on the advice of his assistants, he decided to try to save it. Therefore after spending nearly two hours cleaning out and repairing it he stitched it up, put it back and sewed up the incision. He still felt that his second judgment was correct. I disagreed with him, for I continued to grow steadily worse.

“Doctor, that kidney must have _died_ of the operation. I wish to God you had taken it out and thrown it into the sewer; then I should have been well rid of it,” I said in despair. “I’m poisoned, I tell you, I’m _poisoned_!”

But in his calm dialectical way he went on to explain several reasons justifying his action, and others accounting for my condition. Finally he convinced me that he was right; that my condition was only a natural outcome of such an operation, and all I had to do was set my mind on getting well. After he left I called in the family and said we’d play auction bridge; that what I needed was action and diversion. They were thunderstruck at seeing me climb out of bed and call for my dressing gown and slippers. Though my head was in a constant whirl we played for an hour, when Doctor Braasch came in and dropped into a chair, looking rather troubled.

THE CALAMITOUS VERDICT

“What worries you, Doctor?” I asked. For a moment he looked at me, perhaps wondering if it were best to make a clean breast of matters; then without any mollifying preliminaries he said: “That kidney will have to come out; it’s your only chance. Septicemia and uremic poisoning have set in, and with the utmost haste we shall be none too soon.” (Any physician will understand what a meager chance a patient has under these conditions.)

No judge in pronouncing the death sentence on a criminal ever dealt a more staggering blow. It fell upon me like an earthquake upon a tottering structure, and my emaciated physique proved unequal to the shock. The whirling in my head suddenly increased and in my weakened highly nervous condition when I thought of cutting in through the newly healed wound, an oppressive darkness settled over everything and for a brief space I passed out of the interview. When I came to, the first thing I noticed was that the air seemed fresh, and the ceiling had gone back to its normal height. Doctor Braasch regarded me with an anxious inquiring look.

“Make it as quick as possible,” I said. “Lucky you discovered it.”

“It was _you_ who made the discovery,” he frankly admitted. He then gave his orders to the nurse. Twenty minutes later I was on the operating table; Doctor Will and his staff, with a considerable audience of physicians, all in white masks and gowns, were standing in readiness, and a nurse was saying, “Now relax and take deep breaths.” The urgency was such that they broke all precedents of the institution, since kidney operations were never done there, and Doctor Will never operates in the afternoon, after operating in the morning. A dozen or so doctors from the clinic having heard of the _affaire extraordinaire_ came in to view the proceedings.

Were it possible to relate in detail what followed the next few days it would only prolong agonizing scenes which would be more depressing than diverting to both the reader and the writer. If it be difficult for one with sympathetic tendencies to read of such harrowing experiences, it is doubly hard to write about them.

They changed my nurse for two others more skilled in surgical cases. For the first time Doctor Will refrained from his customary jokes, and whenever he called his face wore a look of seriousness. He was plainly disturbed; he was also unusually tender and solicitous.

From two or three sources my wife heard that kidney operations do queer things to people, and some Gloomy Gus assured her that even if I got well I’d be so peevish that no one could ever live with me. And on the fourth day after the second operation she chanced to hear one nurse remark to another in the corridor outside my door--“Isn’t it too bad that Doctor Will’s patient in Number 88 is going out!”

Nowadays, hospital patients don’t _die_; they merely “_go out_.”

At night my sleep was broken and constantly haunted by all sorts of weird dreams and illusions. If there is anything more boresome than the act of listening to a detailed account of somebody else’s operation, it is to lend an ear to some fantastic dream; but seeing that the ancient writers used to lay great stress on these somnific aberrations I will risk telling of a curious one that still haunts my memory. I dreamed that someone had brought me a number of small sleep storage tanks, resembling oxygen tanks, and told me that while I was getting my best sleep in the early part of the night I should sleep them all full, then later when the opiate wore off I would have a reserve supply to draw upon. I took the tanks one by one, slept them full and after capping them securely I laid them down carefully in a row. Later when I became semi-wakeful and restless I took up one of the tanks to extract some sleep from it; but to my amazement the cap had been removed and it was empty. I examined the others and found the sleep had all been drawn off. For a moment I wondered who had tampered with my tanks; but the villain was not far to seek, for lying serenely there beside the last tank was a husky looking kidney, sound asleep!

FLIRTING WITH THE SHADOWS

Reluctant as I am to dwell upon the sad farewells incidental to the departure of souls from this sphere, I feel that the history of this episode would be incomplete without some account of the circumstances and personal sensations attending the crisis. My strength having been seriously impaired by the first operation and the resultant attack of poisoning, after the second operation I sank lower and lower, until the physicians practically abandoned all hope. And though I was kept in ignorance of their diagnostic conclusions I sensed the gravity of the situation both from my own feelings and from the mysterious actions of those about me; and every time I closed my eyes it was with a feeling of final submission to what seemed the inevitable. Death, which in the distance I had always pictured with unmitigated horror, seemed now to have lost much of its terror; and though its proximity gave me a ghastly feeling, in a way it appeared more like a messenger of relief than a harbinger of ill. Sometimes in my desultory sleep its phantom-like skeleton form seemed to move stealthily about the room, its sunken eyes steadily fixed upon me; and once I imagined it reposing beside me in the bed. The sensation was so shockingly uncanny that I involuntarily put out my hand; and fancy my astonishment when I awoke to find myself clutching the arm of the night nurse, whom I had startled out of a comfortable doze at my bedside!

On the fifth day it was decided that I had but a few hours left, and that a transfusion of mercurochrome was the last forlorn hope. It was a hazardous alternative and would either kill or cure in about forty minutes; but if it killed there was nothing to lose, for I was lost anyway; if it cured there was everything to gain. A well known physician, afflicted with septicemia in a neighboring hospital, had taken it the day before, and died in thirty minutes. My wife asked one of Doctor Will’s assistants for his honest opinion on the probable outcome in my case; to which he answered, “He still has a fighting chance. If he doesn’t die of uremic convulsions inside of forty minutes, he may recover.”

My family were brought together at the bedside.... Lying in a state of semi-consciousness, I remember seeing one of the doctors approach the bed with a huge bottle of reddish fluid (mercurochrome) to which a long rubber tube was attached. Having no idea of what they were going to do, and mistaking this for the usual pink mixture of loganberry juice and castor oil, which I supposed they wanted me to drink through the tube, I closed my eyes and set my teeth. Presently someone raised my arm, then I felt the needle inserted, and when the fluid began to circulate through the veins, my limbs became numb; and as the paralytic feeling crept over my body it seemed as if the bed were slowly moving from under me. Then I imagined my head was in the hub of a great horizontal wheel which spun around with terrific speed for a while, and gradually slowed down till it barely moved. Like the propeller of an aeroplane, its momentum held me aloft over a deep chasm, and when the speed slackened I could feel myself descending, feet first, into the depths. I reached frantically about endeavoring to find something to cling to, but there were no supports, and startled at the increasing rapidity of my descent I opened my eyes--as one will awake from a terrifying dream--and stared about, wondering why so many people had gathered in my room. One physician clung to my pulse, while the other attendants stood about with bowed heads. Suddenly I caught the meaning of it all, and as I closed my eyes resignedly I felt my loved one’s tears on my face. With a final conclusion that all was over, I remember whispering, “Good-by; no flowers, please.” I knew nothing more for two days.

I have heard that persons approaching the gates of Paradise have been known to hear music and angel voices beckoning from within; and although fully conscious of the fact that I was close upon the portals of eternity I could catch not the slightest glimpse or sound of anything beyond; which convinces me that there is at such times no physical communication whatever between this world and Elysium, unless perchance it happened that I was nearing the wrong gate.

During the critical forty-minute interval, while five physicians stood waiting the outcome, one of them quietly recommended that any absent relatives be promptly notified. It was a toss-up with the Grim Reaper--and I won; though the victory was not assured for several days.

Later when I inquired after a missing member of our party I was told that about the time of the crisis he had been dispatched posthaste for home to shovel the snow off the family lot.

THE ROAD TO RECOVERY

The rest of the story is in a somewhat lighter vein. When they first lifted me from the bed and sat me in an easy chair for a few minutes, I felt as I imagine a jelly-fish might feel after being stepped on. My head wobbled about from one shoulder to the other like that of a newly hatched bird, and altogether I felt as if I had scarcely enough stamina to begin life over again. I well remember the comment of my nurse, who was so delighted with having “pulled me through” and at seeing me up in a chair that for a moment her Irish humor overcame the art of simulation. After viewing me for some seconds with an estimating eye she honestly confessed that I looked like the last piece at a remnant sale.

As I looked out of the window and saw figures moving about on the streets it seemed as if I had migrated to some alien world, where everything was topsy-turvy, and I asked the nurse why everybody was walking backward.

She smiled and shook her head.--“You’ve been very ill.”

My head went round and round, as if it were on a swivel. A blustering snowstorm was in progress and as the figures scurried about on the street I was puzzled to know why they all faced the wrong way--how they could tell where they were going, or when they arrived at their destination. I was barely conscious of having once lived somewhere, on some sphere, and I vaguely wondered if I should now have to begin life anew and learn everything all over again, or if I could pick up the broken threads and start where I had left off.

My wife having heard that I was sitting up, came in. We talked for a while, and somehow she appeared relieved to find how little I remembered of what had happened the past few weeks. She seemed glad that I was going to get well, perhaps because--among other considerations--it lessened the burden on her conscience for having pushed me into the first operation; and by way of making amends for this, and also for scolding me about my stubborn refusal to get well before the second operation, she said I had been a very good patient; that I had been right all the while, and I knew more than all the doctors, nurses and everyone else--even including herself--about what ailed me. After this tremendous concession--which made me a little suspicious that something had gone awry and some bad news must be impending--she asked if there was anything I wanted. This seemed odd, after getting used to being _told_ what I wanted.

“Yes,” I said, “I want a new room.”

“But you have a nice room, with plenty of air, light, private bath and everything.”

“I don’t like it,” I said.

“What is there you don’t like about it?”

By this time I was becoming tired from overexertion. She afterwards told me that I looked wearily about, then resting my eyes on the paneled oak door I said,--

“The door is upside down--I want another room.”

In the weeks that followed I had the usual run of bad days and nights, when things looked gloomy and hope sank low, but all things considered, my recovery was satisfactory to the physicians, though it seemed slow, and at times uncertain, to me.

A few days after my first experience of sitting up, Doctor Will came in and found me nibbling on a piece of toast--the first solid food I had taken in many weeks--which prompted him jokingly to remark that since I was beginning to eat, the price of my board ought to be raised.

“Doctor,” I said, “that reminds me of something that’s been worrying me of late. You being one of America’s greatest surgeons, naturally I have a patriotic pride in being operated on by you; but when I came here I had no intention of giving you a steady job cutting me open and sewing me up. One operation at a time by a great surgeon is usually as much as any ordinary person can stand, either physically or financially, and my Scotch instinct warns me that you are running me into ruinous extravagance.”

“Never mind, my good fellow,” he said; “don’t let that bother you. We are here to cure you, not to get your money; and when you get your bill if it isn’t satisfactory all you need do is scratch out the amount and fill in your own figures--whatever sum is agreeable to you, and that will be our price.” But I was so elated over my recovery that it didn’t occur to me to acquaint the office with this generous proposal.

SUBCONSCIOUS HALLUCINATIONS

It is remarkable what latent powers of reminiscence and narration are awakened by certain species of illness. In my case these ran chiefly along the lines of ancient history; and during the weeks of lucid or semi-lucid intervals I nearly wore out both my night and day nurses with Greek tragedies and Greek and Roman history and mythology. I recited the action and described the mythical gods and heroes in no less than a dozen Greek dramas, and at various times I discoursed at length upon the satiric comedies of Aristophanes, the tragedies of Euripides, the naval exploits of the great Themistocles, the eloquence of Demosthenes, the philosophy of Socrates, and the superb sculpture of Praxiteles. Then coming down five hundred years later to the days of Roman grandeur, I quoted many long since forgotten passages from Horace, Vergil and other poets and orators of the Golden Age. I declaimed, almost word for word, a famous oration by Cicero (which I had not read or heard since my school days, and of which I can now recall scarcely a single line), and likewise while raving over the epistolary attainments of Pliny the Younger I repeated the celebrated letter he wrote to his friend Maximus on the subject of downfallen Greece.

Although the nurses and others who listened were dumfounded at such harangues coming from an invalid, lying at times almost at the point of death, they were not more astonished than I was, and still am, at such abnormal volubility. The night nurse--a patient soul, who bore the brunt of my hallucinations--afterwards told me she had been much alarmed, because she had somewhere read that the lamp of genius often flickers and throws out rays of unusual brilliance just before it expires.

One morning, when I was well on the way to recovery, the head nurse looked in at the door and asked me how the “baby philosopher” was getting along.--“When you get well you must write a book.”

I said that was exactly what I intended doing the moment I got strong enough to wield a pencil. By way of encouragement my day nurse--a humorous, high-spirited Colleen--said it reminded her of an obscure author she once had as a patient. During his illness he ranted constantly about a wonderful story he had just conceived--one that would make him both rich and famous; but a few days later he died without revealing the plot to anyone but herself.

“Bring me a pad and pencil immediately,” I ordered. She did so, and most of this narrative was written in bed during the following weeks of convalescence.

CONCLUSION

It is well known that the medical profession is constantly on the alert for any new discoveries that will benefit suffering humanity; and I am told that they welcome suggestions, even from laymen, that may be helpful in achieving this end. One of the habitual aversions that people have to clinics and hospitals is their arbitrary rules and regulations, in complying with which patients feel that they are obliged practically to relinquish all control over both body and mind. Indeed I once heard a woman remark that she looked on these places as she did on a jail. Doubtless this is an altogether wrong impression; but nevertheless it prevails. We must assume that the first concern of every physician is that his patients have not only the best care but a complacent mind; and one way of helping to accomplish this desire is for surgeons to invent some substitute for adhesive tape. And I wonder if clinics and hospitals intend always to keep castor oil at the head of their diet list.

Furthermore if physicians were to establish a more mutual and candid relationship with their patients, and authorize nurses and other hospital attachés to treat them as rational human beings, possessed of some knowledge of their own feelings--at least to the extent of knowing whether they are getting better or worse--it might help to remedy a condition which I once heard an eminent physician term “an emergent deficiency.”

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

A Table of Contents has been added for convenience.