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enjoy his meals quite as much because now he has a mystic impairment, and it's up to him to heed the warning. And all because the doctor could not refrain from defining his position vis-a-vis the patient with a medical-sounding term, emphasized by a prescription for an anti-spasmodic and a tranquilisive."

  "But if the patient had colitis, what else could the doctor say?"
  "He could explain that the symptom didn't indicate a disease

at all but simply a variation of normal, a minor functional disruption, and that the constriction of the gut seen on the x-ray films was only a normal peristaltic wave. He could have reminded the patient that the symptom lay well within the range of normal behavior, that the human being is pretty tough and can take in his stride all sorts of functional variations. That would have been much more truthful and the patient would not have been deprived of the confidence he had had, that he was well and strong. Without that conviction he becomes a weaker person with a concealed concern, one which may well provide a context for every future symptom that would otherwise escape his attention. Don't you see that he has thus been rendered a disservice?"

  "I see what you mean."
  "This is a minor example, but the thing goes much further.  Much

more devastating is the case of emphysema - do you know what that is, Inspector?"

  "Only the word and a vague idea.  Doesn't it have something

to do with your lungs?"

  "Yes, it's a kind of aging, wear and tear process by which

some of the alveoli break down to form larger ones, with the result that the total capillary field of gaseous exchange - carbon dioxide given up and oxygen taken in - is reduced. Like a bunch of one hundred tiny grapes which somehow breaks down and fuses into fifty larger grapes. It's common enough, to a greater or lesser extent, to be compared with the wrinkling of our skin as we get older. If you have a scientific ear, you can detect it easily with the stethoscope by the breath sounds. In a normal chest the breath sounds over the periphery are like wind rustling in leaves, whereas the wind