Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/403

Rh general measure by which. the stricken organism may be nursed back to health.

And if we mumble and shift as we face legitimate inquiry as to the nature of disease and of remedial measures, and strive to foster the old conception of the body's hidden mechanisms as of a "strange internal kingdom of which we are the hapless and helpless monarchs," we surely can not justly protest if the baffled inquirer turn to the charlatan.

While in many cases the patient is so ignorant, so heedless, so indifferent, so little in control of his mental outfit, that the simple dictum of the doctor may convey all that is wise, it is still, I think, true that usually a clear and simple explanation of his condition and an enlistment of his intelligence, or that of his friends, in the nature of his malady and the measures proposed for its removal, not only often contribute to success, but also, on the part of the physician, are more dignified and more humane.

But, beyond this phase of helpfulness, the physician has the largest opportunity in his intimate dealings with his charges to so counsel and instruct that, especially in the routine of household life, the fundamental principles of healthy living may be understood and followed.

I am aware that to many physicians this is now the accustomed way; but it might, I think, wisely be the way more often trod.

Again, the practitioner of medicine has facilities for fruitful research to-day, however simple or obscure the field of his activity, such as no earlier time has realized—because our problems are more precise, our methods more exact, and opportunity for interchange of thought abundant.

There is, indeed, no better example of the scientific method of research than the performances, physical and mental, of the well-equipped physician as he stands in the presence of this delicate mechanism faltering in its tasks. He summons his facts—by story, by test, by observation; frames from them, in the light of all the lore which he can muster, a clear conception, or a theory if you will, of the cause and nature of the disturbance; and then, by all the varied agencies at his command, assumes the role of Nature's helper in the promotion of recovery.

There is nothing which the worker in the laboratory can do with his tubes and balances more strictly scientific than the work which engages the practitioner in his daily rounds. For it is the method, not the tools or place or subject of our tasks, which makes them scientific or unscientific. It is just as easy to be unscientific in the laboratory as at the bedside, and in either place it is easy to lose sight of science in the detail of mechanical routine.