I have found it a good plan not to treatment, operations, etc., but to take them into my confidence and explain in popular language the case of the trouble. Even if a man obviously suffers from heart disease, it is ridiculous and inhuman to tell him in detail about the degeneration of the heart muscle or the mal-functioning of a heart valve or several heart valves. It is much better to assure the man that the heart is a self-repairing strains, that wise living will probably improve his heart.
It is perfectly useless to give him scientific tracings of the heart beat and scientific explanations of heart defects. After all, the heart cannot be mended by a doctor, surgeon or some other individual but only by nature. Many a man has been told by a specialist that his heart was in such a dreadful condition that insurance company would insure his life. Yet such men have been known to live to an extreme old age.
The patient should be made comfortable in the consulting room. He should be placed on a thoroughly comfortable chair in a good light shining on his face. That will ensure that the prescribers face is in darkness or semi-darkness and the patient will not be upset if some of his statements should bring to the prescribers face a look of horror, pity or compassion, which would dishearten the individual who seeks advice and help.
Some doctors and lay healers favour the use of instruments such as stethoscopes, the electro-cardiograph, an apparatus for measuring blood pressure, etc. The finest diagnostic instrument is the human brain. It is infinitely more efficient than the most cunningly devised scientific toys and tools.
In studying the patients case it is not so important to find the scientific name of the disease, but to discover the remedy. If a patient complains about his digestive troubles and tells the prescriber that he is relieved by eating, then the skilled homoeopath will immediately think of Anacardium, but he should not prescribe Anacardium merely because pain is relieved by eating.
He wishes to make quite certain that Anacardium is the right remedy. If he knows all the symptoms produce and cured by Anacardium, then he can cross-examine the patient in order to make certain whether Anacardium is the right remedy or not. If he has not adequate knowledge of the Materia Medica, then he should refer to his Materia Medica and ask the patient whether he possesses a number of the symptoms found under the heading of Anacardium.
The Anacardium patient usually has a bad memory, finds concentration difficult, is apt to curse and swear, is apt to suffer from eruptions, etc. If the prescriber puts a number of questions in order to make certain whether Anacardium is the patients remedy, and he feels certain the Anacardium is the right remedy, then he should give Anacardium.
If, on the other hand, he finds that the patient who apparently needs Anacardium has a good memory, good concentration is not shy, etc., he should search for another remedy which suits the patient better. It is disastrous to falsify evidence and to deceive oneself by making up ones mind that the patient ought to have such and such a remedy although only one or two of his symptoms call for it.
If a girl complains about delayed periods the prescriber will immediately think of Pulsatilla, especially if the girl should be fair-haired, blue-eyed, stout and tearful, but it is not sufficient that there are a few of the symptoms of Pulsatilla. He should make doubly sure by asking : ” Do you like or do you dislike fat and rich pastries > Do you feel better in the open air or indoors ? Do you lie in bed with your hands under your neck or over your head ? Have you a dry mouth and no thirst ? ” in order to make quite sure that Pulsatilla is really the right remedy.
An interrogation is far more pleasant to the average patient than a physical examination. Moreover, the interrogation brings out far more important facts than the physical examination. At the same time, patients should be carefully examined unless they strongly object to it ; otherwise important facts may be overlooked. One may discover that a patient unless they strongly object to it ; otherwise important facts may be overlooked.
One may discover that a patient has hundreds of moles on the body, and he has never mentioned their existence because he thinks they are unimportant. The existence of numerous moles suggests Thuja as a remedy and vaccinal poisoning as a cause. Again, undressing may show that the patient has a rupture or some skin disease may show that the patient has a rupture or some skin disease which he has not mentioned, or an enormous number of warts and pimples, or prolapse of the abdomen, or that there is a fibroid tumour in the womb, etc.
The outer examination is very important, and here again scientific instruments are far less needed than intelligence. A careful inspection of the right chest and the left chest will show whether a lung has shrunk. If there is a shrinkage of a lung, then the ribs follow.
The pumping out of the stomach, examination with X-ray and the gastroscope, may prove that the man has a prolapsed stomach, a stomach which hangs too low, but the facts of the position may be ascertained just as well by pressing ones hands round the lower abdomen of the patient and lifting it up. If the patient feels greatly relieve by the backward and upward pressure, he undoubtedly suffers from prolapse. If he finds the lifting upward and backward uncomfortable, then he has no prolapse.
When a patient suffers from anaemia, doctors frequently recommended a blood test. Blood tests may be theoretically interesting, but anyone with a pair of eyes can see at a glance if a patient is anaemic, full-blooded, sub-normal or normal. All the scientific tests cost money, and one should not waste the money of ones patients in unnecessary scientific enquiries.
If a patient arrives tired or nervous, then he should be given a little rest. A little chat about the weather, political events, etc., Will prove helpful, and the patient will appreciate it greatly if one makes him still more comfortable with a choice cigarette, a nice cup of tea, a good glass of wine or whatever may be called for. There are doctors who will never give a patient any refreshment. An exhausted and nervous patient will leave the consulting room of such a man in a much worse condition. Humanity demands that one should give hope, peace and comfort to the poor sufferers who come and ask for advice and help.
No one can become a good doctor unless he loves his work, loves his patients, loves mankind and wishes to relieve suffering. Medicine is not a profession. One can “profess” anything. Medicine is a calling, like religion. In every religion there are priests who ought never to have become priests, and there are some holy men who have taken up church work. Similarly, in medicine there are some good men and good healers, and there are others as well.
There are plenty of men who become doctors, not because they wish to help their suffering brothers and sisters, but because they believe they can obtain a pleasant social position and a comfortable income. Men who enter medicine for selfish reasons will never become good doctors and they will never find satisfactions in their work, even if they should financially prosper.
The interest of the patient must always be the foremost consideration of the prescriber. Some doctors have been dehumanized by what they call science. I have met many patients who have been gravely injured by so-called examinations. I remember the case of a poor fellow who had cancer of the bowel. He was taken to hospital and was examined by a surgeon by way of the back passage.
The surgeon treated him rather roughly and he suffered pain. There were a number of medical students who were looking on, and they were induced by the surgeon to make the same examination. About a dozen large and clumsy fingers were forced into the abdomen of the unfortunate individual, who collapsed. With mistaken heroism he endured the torture instead of protesting with the utmost energy against this abuse.
In examining one should never give pain. If examination is intolerably painful, then examination should be done under a local or a general anaesthetic, but the use of anaesthetics is often dangerous. I, personally, never advise examination of a bladder by means of the cystoscope under an anaesthetic. The cystoscope is an instrument almost as thick as a pencil which is bored into the bladder, causing a fearful strain on the urinary passage. Frequently laceration results.
If the examination is done, let us say, in the case of an enlarged prostate, the prostate may be injured or the bladder wall may suffer. A feeble old man, quite out of condition and enormously fat, came to me and told me that he had bladder trouble and that his doctor had sent him to an eminent bladder specialist. The specialist told him to an eminent bladder specialist. The specialist told him that it was obvious that he suffered from an enlarged prostate, but that he was in such a poor condition that an operation was quite out of the question.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.