The Physician : Part 8

Doctor and Patient
by S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.

(Page 9 of 14)

Some are desirable but not truly essential, and yet help or hurt him much. Whether he is gentle and well-mannered, is socially agreeable, or as to this negative, influences much the choice of the woman on whom, as a rule, comes finally the decision of who her family physician shall be. Too often she is caught by the outside show of manners, and sets aside an abler and plainer man, who has more really the true manners of the heart, yet lacks the power to make himself pleasant. Desirable it is, of course, to be what so many of the best physicians have been, refined and tactful gentlemen, and also charming companions. But a man may be a most competent, clear-headed, honest, scrupulously careful doctor, and yet be plain, ill-dressed, and uninteresting, and all this it is as well to understand.

The mass of professional opinion is not so easily pleased as are individual patients. It decides pretty early in any large community, and classifies its members accurately, reversing very often the verdict of the juries of matrons, who do so much to make or mar our early fates. Soon or late it sifts the mass, knows who are the thorough, trustworthy, competent, hard-headed practitioners, who are the timid, who the too daring, who ride hobbies, and who trust too much to drugs. Soon, too, it distinguishes those on whom it can call in emergencies, and the highest class of men who have the great gift of discovery and the genius of observation.

From the public we can look for no such justice, and our professional manners forbid us to speak of our brethren, save among ourselves, with perfect freedom. As a profession, it is my sincere conviction that in our adherence to a high code of moral law, and in the general honesty with which we do our work, no other profession can be compared with ours. Our temptations, small and large, negative and positive, are many and constant, and yet I am quite sure that no like group of men affords as few illustrations of grave moral weaknesses. It is commonplace to say that our lives are one long training in charity, self-abandonment, all forms of self-restraint.

The doctor will smile at my thinking it needful to even state the fact. He begins among the poor; all his life, in or out of hospitals, he keeps touch of them always. He sells that which men can neither weigh nor measure, and this sets him over all professions, save one, and far above all forms of mere business. He is bound in honor to profit by no patent, to disclose all he has learned, and to give freely and without reward of his best care to all others of his profession who may be sick. What such a life makes of a man is largely a question of original character, but in no other form of occupation is there such constant food useful to develop all that is best and noblest.

Popular opinion has been prone to decide that the physician who is anything else than this is a person not to be trusted. The old axiom is too often quoted as concerns us, "Jack of all trades, master of none." But there are enough men who have the power to be master of many trades and passed master of one. It is a question of applicative energy. Few men in early life can do much more than is needed to learn our art and its sister sciences; but, as time goes on, there are many who can add to it other pursuits which greatly benefit them in a wide sense, and enlarge and strengthen their mental powers, or pleasantly contribute to the joys of life, and so even to the growth of a man's moral nature.

The wise physician, who is fond of etching or botany, the brush, or the chisel or the pen, or who is given to science, does well to keep these things a little in the background until he is securely seated in the saddle of professional success. Then usually he may feel free to reasonably follow out his tastes, and to write, or in any other way insist on freedom to use or make public his results. If only he has the competent fund of persistent industry to draw upon, he will be not the worse, but the better, physician for such enlargement of his pursuits as I refer to, for we may feel sure that in my profession there is room for the direct or indirect use of every possible accomplishment.

About the Author

Silas Weir Mitchell was an American physician and writer. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania in that city, and received the degree of M.D. at Jefferson Medical College in 1850. During the Civil War he had charge of nervous injuries and maladies at Turners Lane Hospital, Philadelphia, and at the close of the war became a specialist in neurology.