Doktor

“ The Doktor swore at him gutturally and, half-turning his own massive head toward his compatriots, ran his fingers over his victim’s skull, standing in a professorial attitude, treating his subject as if he were a plaster cast.
“This,” he went on, still in German, with one hand on Sawyer’s bullet head, “has no trace of the Nordic. There is the rotundity of the Alpine mixed with the Celt. Only asset is a low cunning. Flat skull, low order of the brachycephalic. A poor specimen of class F 3.”
Tony nudged Plessons, and they quietly withdrew. In the moonlight Tony saw that Plessons was grinning. ”

“ Most of the men, lying stretched out there, on those narrow pallet beds, were asleep, but only the two now so near to death seemed really at peace. The others moved uneasily, and from their bloodless lips there issued painful mutterings and groans. One very young soldier kept counting over and over again—from one to thirty-seven. When he came to trente-sept, he always broke off, and began again. In answer to a mute, questioning glance from the Herr Doktor, the Red Cross nurse whispered, 'The thirty-eighth shot struck him. ”

“ When a doktor looks me square in the face and kant see no money in me, them i am happy. ”

“ The strange hoo-hooing continued.
“Yes,” agreed Plessons, “they didn’t cave in like some of ’em do.”
“Prussians, shouldn’t wonder. They’re mean, but they aren’t white-livered. Listen! Guess some officer or non-com’s pulling ’em together. But I bet we’ve got ’em puzzled. They’ll know who it is, but probably won’t know how many. Sawyer, drag out the professor and let’s have a look at him. That’s it.”
“Help! Help!” promptly yelled the Doktor in German at full-lung pressure.
“Heh,” growled Sawyer, “shut yer head, will yer?”
“Let him be,” said Tony. ”

“ There is your fashionable Doctor who lives in a fine house; rides to his "cases" with a servant in livery; utterly eschews all gutter localities, and never troubles himself to go out when his head aches, or in bad weather. His manner of drawing off his gloves is pompous and impressive. Nurse in the corner sinks down into her slippers, utterly quenched by it. While he warms his hands silently at the fire, he is impressing all present with an idea of his immense profundity. This done, he fixes his eyes on the ceiling, and counts his patient's pulse ”

“ These memoranda read as follows: “There shall be a doctor of physic upon whom rests the duty of visiting all the poor patients in the building, females as well as males; a doctor of surgery whose duty it is to apply ointments to all the poor people in the hospital who have wounds of any kind; and a barber who is competent to do, for the women as well as for the men, all the other things that a good surgeon usually does.” ”

“ For a few moments when he talks sentence may link itself to sentence very gravely, but nobody ever knew the Doctor to go long without that keen, bright flash of a smile, provoked by a ready and a constant sense of fun, that illumines his face like a pulsation of the Northern Lights, and—unless you are hard as steel at heart—must make you love him, and do what he wants you to do. ”

“ In the past seventy-five years medicine has progressed from an art to a science. The doctor today has diagnostic aids which would have seemed fabulous to the physician of a hundred years ago. Exact laboratory tests and the X ray enable the physician to base his treatment on definite knowledge. These are as available to the surgeon and doctor aboard ship as to the man working in the most modern and extensive medical center. ”

“ It seemed a long time, Doctor, especially as the man's strength was so great that after his first mad rush his mind grappled with the situation and he lay without a moan, without a struggle. I assisted the surgeon in the little that it was possible to do for the poor fellow, and it was while we were bathing his face that I solved the problem of his identity. ”

“ Shall you become a doctor? Well, I'm afraid, after all, that you must tackle the question for yourself. As an American patient, with a doubtful liver, observed to me this morning, the problem is right up against you; and nobody else can defeat it in your stead. The thought of this has cheered me so amazingly that from now onwards you may safely imagine, I think, an almost contented physician, sitting plumply in a front stall, smiling at the fight over contemplative finger-tips, and merely tendering, between the rounds, some well-worn pieces of ring-side advice. ”

“ The Physician has intercourse with affliction, with pain, with death; his voice is naturally attuned to mildness and gentleness; his step is light and quiet; his face is susceptible of a look of sympathy; he has to do with humanity in its feebleness, to listen to the complaints of the suffering, to bear with the moans of the distressed; it is part of his business to be and to look amiable; who can speak unkindly to the dying? A brute of a Doctor must be a brute indeed! ”

“ Never before had I entered that sad place that the electric thrill of welcome, which only a physician knows, had not pulsated through it, preceding me, from end to end of the long room. The peculiar lighting of the ward that flashes with the presence of a favourite doctor; the sudden flexible smile on pain-pinched lips; the yearning motion of the eyes in some helpless body where only the eyes can stir; the swift stretching-out of wasted hands; the half-inaudible cry of welcome: "The doctor's come!" "Oh, there's the doctor!" "Why, it's the doctor!"—the loving murmur of my name ”

“ When we visit a doctor, we find out before hand whether he is a surgeon or a diagnostician or a homeopath or a faith healer, for we want to know from what angle he will look at our complaint. We ought to be as careful in the choice of our historians as we are in the selection of our physicians. ”

“ One of the most impressive views of the doctor, was his appearance among the young, when the sickness which does not spare our race in the days of our early development, was bearing its distress to the languid frame, and sorrow to the affectionate relatives who watched by the bed-side. I do not mean to say that this illustrious physician was less skilful in dealing with the maladies of middle life, or with those which we deplore in the aged,—whose sun we would have to sink in all the tranquillity of a serene sky. ”

“ Mascarin is right,” thought the doctor. “I trust, madame,” continued he, “that I too may laugh at my own imaginary fears; but whatever may be the result, permit me to remind you that a little time back you said that a doctor was a father confessor; for, like a priest, the physician only hears secrets in order to forget them. He is also more fitted to console and advise, for, as his profession brings him into contact with the frailties and passions of the world, he can comprehend and excuse.” ”

“ Hippocrates!"--"No, sir," said the gentleman.--"How! you understand
surgery," answers the doctor, "and not read Galen and Hippocrates?"--
"Sir," cries the other, "I believe there are many surgeons who have
never read these authors."--"I believe so too," says the doctor, "more
shame for them; but, thanks to my education, I have them by heart, and
very seldom go without them both in my pocket."--"They are pretty large
books," said the gentleman.--"Aye," said the doctor, "I believe I know
how large they are better than you." ”

“ When this fee is well secured, and not before, the Doctor prepares for the hard task that he has undertaken, with as much apparent labour as if he was about to remove a mountain. He casts his eyes all round him to attract notice, puts on grave and important looks, appears wrapt in thought and meditation and enjoys for a while the admiration of the spectators. ”

“ And, first, it is the duty of the Doctor to cure you,—if he can. That is what we call him in for; and a doctor, be he never so clever and delightful, who doesn't cure, is like a mole-catcher who can't catch moles, or a watchmaker who can do everything but make your watch go. Old Dr. Pringle of Perth, when preaching in the country, found his shoes needed mending, and he asked the brother whom he was assisting to tell him of good cobbler, or as he called him, a snab. ”

“ It was not long before the solid trot of Caustic, the old bay horse, and the crashing of the gravel under the wheels, gave notice that the physician was driving up the avenue.
The old Doctor was a model for visiting practitioners. He always came into the sick-room with a quiet, cheerful look, as if he had a consciousness that he was bringing some sure relief with him. The way a patient snatches his first look at his doctor's face, to see whether he is doomed, whether he is reprieved, whether he is unconditionally pardoned, has really something terrible about it. ”

“ The Doctor is ensured his fee, and he sets to work. Thousands and thousands of hearts are beating whilst his eye scrutinizes John Bull’s tongue—suspense weighs upon the bosom of millions as the Doctor feels his pulse. ”

“ And this is what the physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful practitioner. ”

“ Us old-timers, we’re used to thinking of doctors as highly trained professionals—all that pre-Bitchun med-school stuff, long internships, anatomy drills... Truth is, the average doc today gets more training in bedside manner than bioscience. ‘Doctor’ Pete is a technician, not an MD, not the way you and I mean it. Anyone with the kind of knowledge you’re looking for is working as a historical researcher, not a doctor.
“But that’s not the illusion. The doc is supposed to be the authority on medical matters, even though he’s only got one trick: restore from backup. ”

“ Her whole soul goes out to him in unspeakable gratitude when he brings back to her from the power of the grave her husband or darling child. The Doctor knows many of our secrets, of our sorrows, which no one else knows,—some of our sins, perhaps, which the great God alone else knows; how many cares and secrets, how many lives, he carries in his heart and in his hands! So you see he is a very important person the Doctor, and we should do our best to make the most of him, and to do our duty to him and to ourselves. ”

“ The great bulk of his fraternity went through their studious, conscientious, hard-working, and not infrequently heroic lives under the contented conviction of having to deal with two principal facts—disease and medicine—both accessible through study. To them the imponderable factor of the patient represented such or such an aggregation of material—muscle, nerve, blood, brawn, bone, and tissue—which might be counted upon to respond to such and such a treatment in such and such a manner, with very slight variation. The Doctor envied them their simplicity of faith. ”

“ The Doctor saw into his soul through those awful spectacles of his,--into it and beyond it, as one sees through a thin fog. But it was with a real human kindness, after all. He felt like a child before a strong man; but the strong man looked on him with a father's indulgence. ”

“ He has no time to "specialise," is quite unknown to fame; he's understanding, kindly, wise, and "doctor" is his name. Always at patients' beck and call, all hours of day and night, for both momentous ills and small—and oft with death to fight. ”

“ A physician, by ever so great attention, could not so speedily rid a man of the fever, as a patient man would cool, by the breath of his own words, a person who was passionate and burning with wrath. And why do I speak of a physician? ”

“ Our young Doctor seems to me to be gradually getting known in the neighborhood and beyond it. A member of one of the more influential families, whose regular physician has gone to Europe, has sent for him to come and see her, and as the patient is a nervous lady, who has nothing in particular the matter with her, he is probably in for a good many visits and a long bill by and by. He has even had a call at a distance of some miles from home,—at least he has had to hire a conveyance frequently of late, for he has not yet set up his own horse and chaise. ”

“ In the popular apprehension the doctor is still the Medicine Man. We smile when we hear about his antics in barbarous tribes; he dresses fantastically, he puts horns on his head, he draws circles on the ground, he dances about the patient, shaking his rattle and uttering incantations. There is nothing to laugh at. He is making an appeal to the imagination. And sometimes he cures, and sometimes he kills ”

“ The art of medicine among them is distributed thus:--each physician is a physician of one disease and of no more; and the whole country is full of physicians, for some profess themselves to be physicians of the eyes, others of the head, others of the teeth, others of the affections of the stomach, and others of the more obscure ailments. ”

“ Their confidence seems to come with the increase in the number of their medical attendants; and when the chief surgeon, with his dozen of satellites, supported by several capable-looking nurses, has ordered them to take a decoction that works in their systems as if scorpions and tarantella spiders were careering through their veins, they submit with meekest resignation, and admire the regularity with which their doses are timed. You can do things in hospital it would be as much as your life were worth to attempt outside. ”