Worthington Hooker

“ Most flowers have some odor. And the odors of the different flowers are all different from each other. If you were blindfolded, and a pink, a rose, an apple blossom, a pond lily, an orange blossom, and a clover-head, were put up to your nose, one after the other, you would know each of them by its smell. And so of other flowers. What a variety there is in the fragrance that the flowers in the garden and the field send forth into the air! What a multitude of different perfume-factories has our kind heavenly Father provided just to gratify us! ”

“ He may appear to the casual observer to have merged the feelings of the man in those of the physician—to have surrendered his humanity to the cold and stern demands of science. He may seem to be devoid of sympathy, as he goes to work midst scenes of suffering, without a tear, or even a sigh, performing his duties with an unblanched face, a cool and collected air, and a steady hand, while all around are full of fear, and trembling, and pity. ”

“ It flies on the wings of the wind, falls in the rain, runs in the stream, is exhaled from a leaf, trembles in the dew-drop, flows in the blood of an animal or in the sap of a plant, and is always ready to be jostled along in its ever-changing course. ”

“ Hope is as real a cordial to the sick as any restorative medicine that can be given. And the meddler, who attempts to destroy the confidence of a patient in his physician, and thus take from him the hope that he will be relieved by his skill, does as cruel an act as if he entered the sick room and snatched from the very lips of the enfeebled, languishing, and perhaps dying man, the cordial draught which was to revive him. ”

“ Snow-flakes are beautiful things to look at even with the naked eye. How light, and delicate, and feathery they are! When they are very large and the air is still, how slowly and steadily they fall! Let a few of them light upon your coat sleeve, where you can look at them, and you will admire their beauty; and when we look at them through a microscope, we see that there is not only beauty, but a great variety of beauty in them, as there is in all the other works of God. ”

“ He has just been released from suffering. The recollection of those hours, when thought and feeling and sensation were so confused, and all was dark and dim, is still vivid in his mind. The world, from which he has been thoroughly secluded for a little time, now opens fresh upon him again—a new sun shines upon him, and he looks out upon a new earth. The pure air, as he remembers the stifled breath and the languor of disease, has an invigorating buoyancy that it never had before ”

“ It is strange that so many different things can be made out of the same thing. It is strange that a rough bark and hard wood can be made from the same thing as the beautiful flower and the delicious fruit. Look at an apple-blossom, and then look at the bark of the tree, and think of them as being made from the same sap. ”

“ He sees them in their unguarded moments, and when sufferings and trials of every variety, from the great calamity down to the most trivial disappointment, are acting upon them as tests, searching and sure. He sees much that glitters before the world become the merest dross in the sick chamber; and he sees too the gold shining bright in the crucible of affliction. He sees human passion in every form and condition; implacable hatred and love stronger than death ”

“ I have told you that the blood is the building material from which all the parts of the body are made. The use of food, you have seen, is to make the blood, and the chief use of the breathing is to keep the blood in good order. The heart, with its arteries and veins, keeps the blood moving all about the body, so that it may be used in building and repairing. But what is the body built and kept in repair for? It is a house for the mind or soul. The soul—the thinking part of you—so long as it remains in this world, dwells in the body. ”

“ We must apparently throw away much time and effort, and it is only once in a great while that our hearts can be cheered by any obvious good results, or any real gratitude. Benevolence does now and then seem to have a magic wand, with which, almost in a twinkling, she turns scenes of gloom and desolation into those of beauty, and makes even the wilderness to blossom as the rose. But she is generally employed in real drudgery with little immediate prospect of success. She digs and digs patiently, and with the animation of hope. ”

“ Almost every body says when looking at a handsome plant or tree, how beautiful it is! But you will say something more than this. You will say how beautiful and how wonderful too! You think of the sap going up and down in the pipes, of the busy mouths in the roots drinking it up from the ground, of the many different things that are made from the sap, of the beautiful leaves acting as the lungs of the plant, and of the leaf-buds from which the leaves are made. ”

“ But let me say, that whenever you give countenance to quackery, whether it be in the shape of a secret nostrum, or a fashionable system, you strike a blow at the standard of medical education. You in effect say to the physician, observe, watch, study as much as you will, we esteem all your labor and experience vain. When men of wisdom and influence do thus, as I am sorry to say they often do, it certainly casts contempt upon education, and therefore tends to lower its standard in the profession. ”

“ How beautiful are the motions of many of the birds as they fly in the air! How easily and gracefully their wings work! See that bird as it goes up and up; and now see it as it makes a turn, and comes down so swiftly on its outstretched wings, taking a beautiful sweep off at a distance; and then up it goes again to come down, in the same way that boys do when they travel up a long hill to slide down so swiftly on their sleds. The swallow, as he has this fine sport, is, at the same time, getting his living. ”

“ He loves to see the credulous, whether learned or unlearned, gaze at his wonders, and to hear the loose tongues of gossipers busy in his praise. He aims at a reputation for performing great cures in cases in which others have been said to fail—a reputation which no honorable physician ever has, however eminent he may be, because he does not seek after it. Every quack seeks for it, and acquires it to a greater or less extent. The physician can have it if he will make it his aim, but in doing this he puts himself on a level with the quack in the common field of empiricism. ”

“ The bird thinks more than the worm. Some think faster than others. The humming-bird, that darts so quickly from flower to flower, thinks as fast as he works. But the lazy toad is a slow thinker. His mind does not work the machinery of his muscles much, and so does but little thinking. But even he once in a while thinks quickly. Let a fly walk along pretty near him, and he will catch it with his tongue so quickly that you can not see just how he does it. He watches the fly intently, keeping very still all the while; and when it gets near enough, he thrusts out his tongue, and the fly is gone. ”

“ I need barely say in concluding my remarks on this consideration, that the momentary good which occasionally results to individual cases from deception, is not to be put in comparison, for one moment, with the vast and permanent evils of a general character, that almost uniformly proceed from a breach of the great law of truth. And there is no warrant to be found for shutting our eyes to these general and remote results, in our earnestness to secure a particular and present good, however precious that good may be—a plain principle, and yet how often it is disregarded. ”

“ He can send a warm sun, the wind, or a rain, and they are dissolved and changed into water again. The earth’s winter robe, all made of pure white gems, is gone. But God can, whenever he will, turn the clouds above us again into crystals, and strew the earth with them as before. ”

“ Its influence is constant in all diseases; sometimes plain to be seen, as in the case just mentioned; often entirely concealed from the most careful scrutiny; and sometimes revealing itself slightly, so that the watchful eye of the physician catches mere glimpses of it, like passing shadows gone in a moment. Besides the secret griefs and troubles that often hinder recovery, there are varying states of mind, some of which the patient may be hardly conscious of himself, that modify in a thousand ways the movements of disease, and the action of remedies. ”

“ How beautiful is the scene when the snow has fallen gently without wind, and has covered the branches of trees and bushes! Look up into a tree thus covered. There the crystals lie, piled [3107] up, like tufts of cotton, out to the very tips of all the branches. Millions and millions of them are on every twig. How many must there be on the whole tree! And how many on all the trees and bushes, and over the whole surface of the ground!
How easily now can God destroy all these crystals! ”

“ Many a man of fair address, and a good share of cunning, with but a mere smattering of medical knowledge, has dubbed himself a physician, and, adopting Homœopathy, or some other system just then in fashion, has imposed not only upon the ignorant, but the intelligent and learned.
This ought not so to be. The public should, one and all, feel that they are personally interested in upholding a well-educated medical profession. Here is a science which is confessedly difficult above all others, and in which, as you have seen, careless observation is peculiarly liable to error. ”

“ As your cat lies quietly purring in your lap, look at her paws. The claws are all concealed, and the paw, with its cushions, seems a very gentle, peaceable thing; but wake her up and let her play with a string, and as she tries to catch it with her paw, the claws now thrust out make it look like a powerful weapon, as it really is in the eyes of rats and mice. There are muscles that work those claws when the cat’s mind tells them to do it. When the claws are not thrust out these muscles are quiet, but they are ever ready to act when a message comes to them from the brain. ”

“ Assuming, for the moment, that the duties and qualifications of the medical practitioner do not impose upon him a higher degree of responsibility, relative to the spiritual good of his patient, than attaches to every other well-informed Christian, in reference to his neighbor, I may safely assert that the profession of medicine does in no wise release its member from a duty common to all Christians—that of embracing every opportunity to testify their gratitude to the adorable Saviour, and their anxious desire to extend the blessings of redeeming mercy to those who “are ready to perish.” ”

“ Let them do every day what they can, just as each leaf does. Great men, that excite the wonder of the world, can do a great deal of good; but they can not do any thing like as much as is done by a great many people together that do each a little in a noiseless way. Every child, in doing little kind things, may, like the small leaf, do his part of the good that is to be done in the world. And if much of the good that he does is not noticed by others, God sees it all, just as he sees all the moisture that is breathed out by each little leaf. ”

“ The abuse of theory consists in the obliteration of the distinction between what is known, and what is merely supposed. So long as this distinction is carefully preserved, no harm is done by theory. No man was ever more thorough, in maintaining this line of separation between the known and the supposed, than was Newton. “I shall not mingle conjectures with certainties,” a passage in a letter announcing his great discovery of the compound nature of light, is a maxim which always governed him, and should govern every searcher after truth in every branch of science. ”

“ The mind in his little brain thinks of every fly that comes buzzing along, and is anxious that it should get its legs entangled in the snares that he has woven. How glad he feels when he sees one caught by these snares! And if he thinks that they are not strong enough to hold the fly, he runs and quickly weaves some more threads about him. ”

“ If all the energy and talent, which have been expended upon theories, could have been directed to the observation of facts, what a mass of rubbish, which now encumbers the science of medicine, would have remained uncollected, and what an amount of pure unadulterated facts, which as yet are undiscovered, would have been garnered into the storehouse of knowledge! ”

“ There are the hard wood, the rough bark, the tender leaves, the beautiful blossoms, and the pleasant fruit, all made from the same sap. But the variety of things made from your blood is much more wonderful. ”

“ The many sad scenes in which the physician is obliged to mingle must often make him sorrowful, if he has not suffered his feelings and sympathies to be destroyed by a total dereliction of principle. As he watches with earnestness the struggle which occurs in severe cases between life and death for the mastery, and does what he can to give it a favorable issue, how deep is his anxiety, how painful the sense of his responsibility, what balancings of hope and fear does he experience ”

“ The Creator strews beautiful things even on the bottom of the ocean for us. If the coverings, or houses, as we may call them, of all the animals that live there were as homely as that of the oyster, they would be as useful and comfortable for them as they are now, decked with their elegant colors. So far as they are concerned, the beauty is thrown away. But men gather the shells, and, while they admire them, they see in the beauty which the Creator lavishes even in the depths of the sea the evidence of his abounding goodness. ”

“ Let me not be understood to mean that all the notions and caprices of the sick are to be yielded to as a matter of course. I only object to an useless and injudicious warfare with them. There should always be firmness exercised in the management of the sick, but there should be no struggle with them from mere pride of opinion, or a desire for authority, or from want of a proper charity for their mental weakness. They should never be directly opposed, except it be distinctly and manifestly for their good. ”

“ Every day we see evidence of the fact that so large a proportion of the medical profession practice deception upon the sick, that the profession, as a whole, has to a greater or less degree the imputation fastened upon it. Indeed patients often, as a matter of course, make the distinction between the obligations to professional veracity, and those of the man, as a man, in his ordinary intercourse; and the physician, who has an established reputation for the strictest veracity everywhere else but in the sick chamber, has there the suspicion of deception put upon him ”

“ It is the spirit of quackery, actuating quite a large proportion of the profession. It is not always manifested in palpable shape, and in acts which can be exposed to the contempt of all honorable men, but it exerts a concealed and yet a constant influence upon the habits of intercourse, prompting to the use of cunning arts in order to deceive the community, exciting an overweening desire for reputation, with an indifference to the grounds upon which it is based, and producing a competition among physicians that rests, to a great extent, if not wholly, upon false issues. ”

“ There is no dim vision now, but he sees things as they are, and his sensibilities are lively and ready to respond to the touch of the hand of friendship, like the chords of a newly-attuned instrument that gives forth its clear and harmonious sounds to delight the ear. ”

“ This overweening attachment to theories has been a very great obstacle to the advancement of medicine as a science. It has turned the medical mind away from the legitimate pathway of discovery, and the strict observation of facts has been neglected in the contemplation of mere fancies.
It is true of medicine, as it is of every other science, that every advance which has been made has been effected by observation, and by observation alone. It is the good observer, and not the mere ingenious theorizer, who has made these advances. ”

“ Physicians who are called in consultation often have opportunities of defending the reputation of the attending physician from unjust attacks. And if they fail to make the defence when truth demands it, they may be quite as guilty as they would be if they volunteered the attack themselves, for they give to it their sanction; and yet, by doing no positive act, they shield themselves from blame. Lending a listening ear to aspersions upon the reputation of a medical brother, negative as the act is, is under some circumstances more base, and does more harm, than any open and bold attack. ”

“ It is for this reason, that the quackish physician, in common with the open quack, addresses all his appeals to the multitude, and brings all his arts to bear upon the one point of making such false displays as will impress upon their minds the idea that he has uncommon knowledge and skill. He therefore loves their credulous gaze, while he hates the intelligent scrutiny of his brethren. There is no one thing, in which the difference between the empirical and dishonorable physician and the high-minded and truly skilful practitioner is more strongly marked than in this. ”

“ In the practice of medicine, though there is, as you have seen in my first chapter, much uncertainty, there is a high satisfaction in the very exercise of unravelling its perplexities, and in separating, as it can be done by untiring and careful observation, the certain from the uncertain, the true from the false. And though much is left to nature by the judicious physician, still there is much pleasure in watching her movements, in removing obstacles which oppose her salutary processes, and in assisting her efforts so far as it may be necessary to do so. ”

“ There is no disease, the history of whose treatment shows so strikingly the uncertainty of medical knowledge and experience as this does. The most opposite and various remedies and modes of treatment have been lauded as successful, in standard medical works, and in medical journals, and multitudes of certain cures have been proclaimed in the newspapers. What is praised by one is condemned by another; and it is the individual experience of every rational and candid practitioner, that a mode of treatment which at one time is attended with marked success at another is wholly unsuccessful. ”

“ It is important that the physician should have at the outset good habits of observation. If he does, every day’s experience will add to his store of facts, and at the same time relieve it from some of the chaff of error which has been brought in unawares. He will be all the time becoming a better practitioner. But, on the other hand, if he start with a loose habit of observation, experience will be to him a source of error. He will have no clean store of facts, but he will garner in a strange mixture of facts, and suppositions, and errors ”

“ If you see a friend confiding in a quack, or an unskilful and ignorant practitioner, it is your duty to persuade him to relinquish such a misplaced confidence. But you must remember that the evidence upon which you act should be clear and satisfactory, and that no mere preference can justify such an interference, however strong that preference may be. So also, if you have a friend, who trusts his own life and that of his family in the hands of an intemperate practitioner, it is a case which calls loudly for the warnings of friendship. ”