Frederick Arnold

“ There is hardly any great trial for murder, but doctors and counsel come into fierce collision; there is the conflict of medical testimony, and the common-sense of judge and jury is frequently insulted. It would be a golden rule for a medical man never to use a scientific term if a popular term would serve his use as well. The medical man not only states facts, but obtrudes his explanations and theories about them, and does so in highly technical language. The legal mind revolts against the assumption of the medical mind, and in this way much prejudice is done to science. ”

“ An author is to me something more interesting than any thing he does in authorship; a great classic's works are only the fossil remains of a vanished world of intelligence. When patients ponder on pills and potions, I the rather wonder why they do not examine into the nature and idiosyncrasy of their medical man. They may depend upon it that, if he is worth much, he will be examining into their nature and idiosyncrasy. The great question for the patient to solve is, whether his doctor has got the mystic gift. He may be chuckful of science ”

“ In this way, by the medical education abroad, by travelling engagements, and by taking appointments on board ship, we have a travelled class of medical men who represent, perhaps, the most interesting, and certainly the most amusing, section of the profession. Wherever in this wide world the medical man goes, he can carry his work with him and his own letter of introduction. The wants which surgery and medicine relieve speak their own vehement, universal language, and stand in need of no interpreter. The lawyer can do no good with his law when once he is out of England. ”

“ Indeed, it is a humiliating fact that, in those chest-cases where medical science has made the most marvellous discoveries, the actual amount of disease is probably greater than ever it was. The doctors are even quarrelling among themselves, whether certain illnesses are contagious or non-contagious. There is no doubt that scarlatina is contagious; but, at the time of the illness of the Prince of Wales, it was sharply debated whether typhoid fever was infectious or not. ”

“ In the famous cities of the Continent, and in exquisite Swiss villages, we have the most noisome stinks and sights, yet we hear nothing of fever. In fact, it almost seems a rule that, where Heaven throws the greatest beauty and magnificence, man should exhibit the greatest abominations. ”

“ The toxicologists can count up their martyrs to science. It is curious to observe how each advancing wave of time blots out the records of crime. The crime that was a national event becomes a tradition—is lost in a black abyss of forgetfulness. ”

“ The advocates of the contagion theory have no weakness for sewage, especially in an olfactory point of view. They say, also, that it places disease under the most favorable conditions for the consummation of its evil mission. But they assert, in opposition to former theories of the Board of Health—that has an unlimited command of print and pay—that sewage, in itself, does not breed fever and infection, unless it is charged with specific ingredients of contamination. Infectious diseases are only communicated by the virus of specific poison. ”

“ It would be only reciting truisms to speak of the immense generous good they achieve. The amount of self-denying generosity which a physician can practise, and does, is simply incalculable, and there are, indeed, few of us who could not easily furnish a collection of instances.
The curiosities of medical life and practice are endless. If we hear very often of medical men doing arduous work for very scanty remuneration, sometimes there is an agreeable obverse of receiving very splendid remuneration for very scanty services. ”

“ People have been taken ill of small-pox even in prison, under solitary confinement; yet how could we doubt of real though remote infection? Let each individual do his part in the holy crusade against ignorance and disease. ”

“ Not one hundredth part is found of the energy in preventing disease that is employed in attempting to work its cure. What is wanted is a wider teaching of the elementary principles of such matters, and a greater degree of courage and conscience in applying them.
The fact is, that the prevention of diseases should be more regarded than it is, as a true end and scope of medical science. It is to the credit of medical men that they are more and more devoting their best energies in this direction. ”

“ The philosopher and the parson can never be quite sure that they have done any good; the good is so remote and hidden, and it rarely happens that it is ascertained. But the surgeon goes to a man in a state of positive torture, and by a happy bit of carpentering puts him to rights, gives the intense happiness of a sudden cessation from intense pain, and at once earns a thrilling amount of very transitory gratitude. ”

“ High science may leave a man very stupid for practice. The knowledge of things is but an adjunct to the knowledge of ends. The physician, aware, in the first instance, of all the dangers his patient is liable to, should, then, from his own knowledge, select the best means of obviating them; but, though he had the whole materia medlca by heart, he would not be nearer his mark if he knew nothing of disease ”

“ The culture of the medical man is also combined with a very large experience of life in its broadest bearings and its intensest moments. The education, instead of being confined to a single school, has very commonly been carried on at several great medical centres. Travel is more than ever becoming one of the marks of a highly-trained medical man. There is a period of leisure for nearly every medical man, which, rightly used, may be one of unspeakable preciousness and importance for him. This is the time that lies between the call to a profession and the obtaining any large share of work. ”

“ One night, when brooding on his miseries, he heard a bell ringing violently at his surgery door. Opening it, he found that a man had been thrown out of his cab and nearly killed, and they wanted to bring him into the surgery. The medical man found that there were concussion of the brain and dislocation of the shoulder-joint. His card-case showed that he was a man of birth and a well-known politician. He stopped some time at the surgeon's house, who was thus enabled to lay the foundation of a large and lucrative connection. ”

“ Others take longer voyages, and, generally speaking, seek a more adventurous line of life. Thus there are, among men I have known, those who have gone to the Greenland seas, round Cape Horn, to Australia, to India, and the Pacific islands, and have gone, again and again, induced by the divine passion for knowledge and travel. ”

“ Early convalescence is often a most dangerous period in the disorder, when minute particles from the skin-invisible, impalpable—take wings, and become elements of danger, multiplying seeds of disease and death. It is safer to travel in a carriage with parcels of nitro-glycerine than with such a patient. If our national sanitary arrangements were in a satisfactory state, such a case would be certified from the London to the local physician, and, both on road and rail, special carriages would be provided, or the ordinary carriages be at once disinfected. ”

“ But we feel quite certain, especially in days when people travel and sojourn away from home, that no case of illness should be found to exist which any opinion entitled to respect should consider infectious, but it should be surrounded with safeguards, and so be saved from becoming the source of those terrible domestic tragedies with which we are all so unhappily familiar. ”

“ There is no doubt that even fictitious narratives, such as "Early Struggles," in the "Diary of a Late Physician," really give us facts substantially as true as any which we find in regular memoirs. I myself know physicians of singular learning and ability, who for half a dozen years have not taken half a dozen guineas a year. Other men, by the happy use of dress and address, though inferior, leave them far behind. ”

“ A medical man has been attending a patient several years, and yet he has never seen his patient. The gentleman firmly believes that he has an œsophagus of peculiar construction, and that he is accordingly liable at any moment to be choked. That help may be at hand whenever any sudden emergency may occur, he has a physician in the house night and day. The physician, being human, must needs take his walks abroad, and it becomes necessary to provide a substitute for him two hours a day. ”

“ There would be many competitors for the place of medical officer to travel with some of the expeditions that nowadays go round the world. What such travel might be can be seen, with admiring despair, in Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle." Then many people, when they travel, are neither easy nor happy unless they can afford the luxury of a "medical attendant." Some of the best specimens of medical literature that we have are due to this interesting class of medical men. A Milor on his travels likes a parson, a doctor, and a traveller's major-domo ”

“ The real work is to be done when the mind is released from tutors and governors, and can concentrate itself on the thought and work of maturer years. Travel is the opportunity that best enables a man to combine study, thought, and observation. It is astonishing what a large and increasing space is occupied in medical life by travel. ”

“ What made matters so aggravating was, that she was as strong as a horse, while the doctor was a delicate man. She was so selfish and perverse, that he was obliged to tell her that he would have nothing to do with her case. Similarly, I have known the son of a rich man who proposed to pay a clergyman several hundred pounds a year for leave to spend his evenings with him. The parson, however, was obliged to tell his rich friend that he talked such intolerable twaddle, that he could not accept his company on any terms that could be named! ”

“ There is all the difference in the world between books that are written to obtain practice, and books that are written out of the fulness of practice. ... In medical autobiography we have such charming narratives as those written by Sir Benjamin Brodie and Sir Henry Holland. ”

“ We know, also, of cases where lodgings or furnished houses have been let, in the holiday season of the year, after the occurrence of contagious illness, and yet no disinfectants have been used, and no honest warning has been given. It must increasingly be felt how necessary are some caution and judgment in making holiday arrangements. It is comparatively easy for a lodging-house keeper to recover damages from a well-to-do family in a case where fever has been propagated through a want of care and candor ”

“ There is a very wealthy man near a great city, who cannot bear to be left for the night. There is a physician of great ability who drives out of town nightly to sleep at his residence; he is consequently debarred evening society, and if he goes out to dinner he has to leave his friends before wine. He has to charge his patient a thousand a year ”

“ The theory is, that any contagious disease can be eradicated; or, at all events, limited within a very slender area; and that various diseases are in reality contagious, such as typhoid fever and consumption, where the ordinary medical and general mind does not admit the fact of the contagiousness. If we resort to the primitive processes of counting noses, or listening for the largest amount of shouting, we shall decide against the theory ”

“ It is curious to see the race between sin and science: how the tests of the chemist even more than keep up with the craft of the murderer. Some of our most celebrated poisons are of comparatively recent date. ”

“ This is a wise set of sentences, which I have found stored up among my medical notes and reflections, and, I believe, goes pretty deep into the heart of things medical.
If a medical man shows at great advantage in your home or in his own, there is one place in which he is too often uncomfortable, and makes other people uncomfortable as well. ”

“ The best medical men more than ever seem to be familiarized with the scientific medical thought of Germany. The custom of going out as medical officer to vessels is very largely on the increase. Many young men go with the steamers that traverse the regular ocean thoroughfares. Men who have risen to, or descended from, eminence have been glad to take positions on the great lines of steamers. ”

“ We know of a medical man whose duty it is to take lunch every day at a great castle belonging to a noble lord. The household is immense; and there is just the chance that there may be some case of indisposition demanding attention. ”

“ Those who are acquainted with the history of special classes among the poor are aware how much deadly illness there has been at times in the families of laundresses and pawnbrokers, who have had under their charge the raiment of fever-patients, to which no purifying process had been applied. ”

“ Scarlet fever slays in this country annually some twenty thousand people, and disables, more or less, for a longer or shorter time, a hundred thousand more. Yet, humanly speaking, the larger amount of this mortality might be averted by the processes of disinfection, separation, and, we may add, a religious adherence to truth. ”

“ It is not too much to say that all the great triumphs of surgery, such as those in lithotrity and ovariotomy, have been practically neutralized by foul hospital air, to which is due one-half of the deaths in our great metropolitan hospitals. ”