[00:01.50]Lesson 28
[00:03.32]Patients and doctors
[00:12.11]What are patients looking for when they visit the doctor?
[00:18.10]This is a sceptical age,
[00:20.52]but although our faith in many of the things
[00:22.84]in which our forefathers fervently believed has weakened,
[00:27.10]our confidence in the curative properties of the bottle of medicine remains the same as theirs.
[00:33.83]This modern faith in medicines is proved by the fact
[00:37.40]that the annual drug bill of the Health Services is mounting to astronomical figures.
[00:43.38]and shows no signs at present of ceasing to rise.
[00:47.98]The majority of the patients
[00:49.73]attending the medical out-patients departments of our hospitals feel that
[00:54.12]they have not received adequate treatment unless they are able to carry home with them
[00:59.60]some tangible remedy in the shape of a bottle of medicine,
[01:04.01]a box of pills, or a small jar of ointment,
[01:07.88]and the doctor in charge of the department is only too ready to provide them with these requirements.
[01:14.27]There is no quicker method of disposing of patients
[01:17.27]than by giving them what they are asking for,
[01:20.69]and since most medical men in the Health Services are overworked
[01:25.35]and have little time for offering time-consuming
[01:28.42]and little-appreciated advice on such subjects as diet,
[01:32.85]right living, and the need for abandoning bad habits etc.,
[01:38.07]the bottle, the box, and the jar are almost always granted them.
[01:44.07]Nor is it only the ignorant and ill-educated person
[01:47.91]who has such faith in the bottle of medicine.
[01:51.36]It is recounted of Thomas Carlyle
[01:53.77]that when he heard of the illness of his friend, Henry Taylor,
[01:57.80]he went off immediately to visit him,
[02:00.66]carrying with him in his pocket what remained a bottle of medicine
[02:05.05]formerly prescribed for an indisposition of Mrs. Carlyle's.
[02:10.20]Carlyle was entirely ignorant of what the bottle in his pocket contained,
[02:15.39]of the nature of the illness from which his friend was suffering,
[02:18.92]and of what had previously been wrong with his wife,
[02:22.30]but a medicine that had worked so well in one form of illness
[02:26.34]would surely be of equal benefit in another,
[02:29.73]and comforted by the thought of the help he was bringing to his friend,
[02:33.74]he hastened to Henry Taylor's house.
[02:36.91]History does not relate whether his friend accepted his medical help,
[02:41.77]but in all probability he did.
[02:45.20]The great advantage of taking medicine is that it makes no demands on the taker
[02:50.11]beyond that of putting up for a moment with a disgusting taste,
[02:54.77]and that is what all patients demand of their doctors--to be cured at no inconvenience to themselves.