.MTM5Nw.MTIwNzg5

40

which would have the empirical effect of enhancing the patient's effectiveness, energy, joie de vivre or what not. I told her that if careful study had shown that she was anemic or hypo-thyroid or that she was suffering from leukemia or tuberculosis or even that further studies were indicated to rule out some disease, I would proceed gladly to prescribe the medication or the required tests. But I had not found any such evidence. "Well, why don't I feel like I want I want to feel," the [crossed out: wretched] patient asked, her hackles rising. Seeing that she thought I had detected the fakeness of the invoice - this, of course, is in tribute to your profession, Inspector - I warmed up and assured her that I had every sympathy with her, that the work we do with a sense of defeat, or lack of appreciation or success, leaves us with great fatigue, whereas we can dance all night if we like the partner and the music. I enquired cautiously into the washing machine situation and finally accompanied her to the door. "Well, I'll say this," she proclaimed. "I never met such an honest doctor in my life." And that was the last time I saw her."

   The Inspector laughed.  "Do you really think it would have been wrong

to give her the stuff? Don't you have to do that sort of thing sometimes with that kind of person? Isn't a prescription a kind of laying on of hands, and she would have felt better every time she took a spoonful. You know, you get quite weak minded if you're sick or injured and plenty are weak minded if they're well. It's not for me to be telling you how you have to practice medicine, but I remember some evenings back in the hospital, when I thought I couldn't face the night ahead, but if Miss Effie would come in before she went home, with some little old pill or ^'even' a cup of chicken broth. I could sleep. But if she was too busy, I felt hot and I hurt all over and couldn't settle down."

    "Yes, I know.  One of the older nurses taught me that lesson some

time later in connection with a man in his upper sixties who was dying of generalized vascular, as well as coronary artery, disease. He had suffered from such severe angina that he used to have several attacks even as he walked down the little interior corridor to my consulting room. Finally, he got to his last coronary occlusion