Specialist

“ The physician, whether as a specialist or a general practitioner, by years of study, experience and ability, becomes an authority, and the record of his experience and his dissertations fill the pages of the medical journals, and his name and fame exist in records more enduring than brass. ”

“ A man who says he is a specialist in the thirteenth century, is he not like a man who pretends that he is a specialist in respiration in the evening?
"Nature does specialise; witness her innumerable specialists. ”

“ Someone once defined a specialist as "a man who learns more and more about less and less until he finally knows everything about nothing." And there is the converse, the general practitioner, who knows "less and less about more and more until he finally knows nothing about everything." ”

“ Does a modern specialist in heart-diseases study the kidneys? Does a specialist in surgery care to study the nerves? Even so an animal does not care to speak. It is a specialist; it restricts itself to its 'business,' to 'the point.' The little ones say that animals have no general ideas, and that [Pg 15] is why they cannot speak. But have human specialists any general ideas of anything, and yet—do they not speak? ”

“ Thus it so often happens that the general practitioner pursues old methods of treatment which science has long since replaced with others, acknowledged to be superior. The specialist, on the contrary, by confining his studies and researches to one class of diseases only, is enabled to inform himself thoroughly and accurately on all the improvements made in the methods and means of practice in his special department. ”

“ We feel a pride in being spoken of as 'specialists'—and yet what is a specialist? The nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of a man. Call me not an entomologist, call me a lepidopterist, if you will—though, really, that is too broad a term for a man who is not so much taken up with moths generally as with the third ring of the antennæ of the great oak-eggar. ”

“ The specialist who concentrates all his attention on a narrow field of study and practice is tempted to exaggerate its importance, and to analyze and disintegrate his facts till he loses sight of their relation to and their dependence on each other ”

“ The only reliable physician, in these days of complicated disorders and high-pressure living, is the "Specialist," the man who understands his own branch of the business. Such, in his line, is Dr. Pierce. ”

“ ADVANTAGES OF SPECIALTIES.
By thorough organization and a perfect system of subdividing the practice of medicine and surgery in this institution, every invalid consulting us is treated by a specialist—one who devotes his undivided attention to the particular class of diseases to which his or her case belongs. The advantage of this arrangement must be obvious. Medical science offers a vast field for investigation, and no physician can, within the limit of a single life-time, achieve the highest degree of success in the treatment of every malady incident to humanity. ”

“ I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist’s opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. ”

“ If we are really ill we go to a specialist on our ailment, no matter what “pathy” we prefer. Special knowledge has a prima facie worth, and without inquiry into a subject we are inclined to consider specialists on the subject better informed than those who have not this qualification. ”

“ But it must not be supposed that we can return to the methods of the old Egyptians—who, if my memory serves me correctly, had a special physician for every part of the body—without falling into certain errors and incurring certain liabilities.
“The specialist is much like other people engaged in lucrative business. He is apt to magnify his calling, to make much of any symptom which will bring a patient within range of his battery of remedies. ”

“ If we have all made up our minds to allow the specialist to set the pace for us, either to be specialists ourselves or vulgarly to compete with specialists, for the right of living, or getting a living, there is going to be a crash sometime. ”

“ It was not at all uncommon for a plain and simple farmer, with no pretension to a knowledge of medicine or surgery, to acquire a reputation as a specialist in some particular branch of the profession. ”

“ The merchant who sells everything cannot compete with the man who makes it his business to sell one class of goods. This is an age of specialists, and what we considered a specialist twenty-five years ago is only a generalist from the present standpoint. The specialist of twenty-five years ago has been divided again and again. The best doctor today is one who doctors the eye alone, the stomach alone, or the nerves alone. He can do more for you and knows more of your case in five minutes' observation than the generalist would in three months. ”

“ The first two modes of treatment are not considered to demand the skill of a specialist for their application, but the third and fourth are undertaken only by those who have special powers and knowledge. ”

“ ‘We only diagnose,’ they say, ‘but go to such-and-such a specialist, he'll cure you.’ The old doctor who used to cure all sorts of disease has completely disappeared, I assure you, now there are only specialists and they all advertise in the newspapers. ”

“ Let any specialist, who has just obtained some notable result, be asked to name half a dozen experts in his own subject to whose opinion he would be willing to submit his discovery, and it will be found that he will with difficulty name half as many, and those not specially eminent in that subject. ”

“ The specialist, the treatment of chronic diseases being his vocation, is equally annoyed if consulted by those suffering from acute diseases, but does not pursue the inconsistent course of assuming to treat them. ”

“ "I never understood what common sense meant applied to complicated problems--unless it means that a general practitioner can perform a better operation than a specialist." ”

“ With the growth of science comes the specialist, and with the development of the specialist comes the consulting specialist—a man who does not engage in competition with the rank and file of the profession, but conserves his energies and fits himself for dealing with special problems. In the past the consulting practise has generally come as a result of preeminent success in ordinary practise, and from a desire to select the most important work. This is illustrated in medicine and engineering. ”

“ An exclusive specialist of this kind stands on a par with a workman in a factory, whose whole life is spent in making one particular kind of screw, or catch, or handle, for some particular instrument or machine, in which, indeed, he attains incredible dexterity. The specialist may also be likened to a man who lives in his own house and never leaves it. ”

“ Having thoroughly qualified himself for the practice of some particular branch of the healing art, the specialist sees no impropriety in acquainting the public with his ability to relieve certain forms of suffering. ”

“ The specialist in history, whose right to legislate upon this matter I have just called into question, will probably emphasize the disciplinary value of this study. Specialists are commonly enthusiastic over the disciplinary value of their special subjects. Their own minds have been so well developed by the pursuit of their special branches that they are impelled to recommend the same discipline for all minds. Again, we must not blame the specialist in history, for you and I think the same about our own special type of activity. ”

“ The doctor who is a generalist cannot excel in any one branch of medicine, or compete with the specialist who devotes all his time and study and practice towards one point and towards the treatment of a specific ailment. ”

“ The 'old-fogy' doctor, who knows the family tendencies of his patient, who 'understands his constitution,' will often treat him better than the famous specialist, who sees him for the first time, and has to guess at many things 'the old doctor' knows from his previous experience with the same patient and the family to which he belongs. ”

“ It is perhaps not too much to say that everybody nowadays knows as much about the treatment of disease as a large proportion of the members of the medical profession did in your time. As you may readily suppose, this is a situation which, even apart from the general improvement in health, would enable the people to get on with one physician where a score formerly found business. We doctors are merely specialists and experts on subjects that everybody is supposed to be well grounded in. ”

“ Thus although the specialist has very often passed through an initial period of eclectic wandering, when he becomes a specialist he is139 very apt to forget his past enthusiasm for anything but his chosen speciality. ”

“ In the first place, medicine has outgrown the capacity of any individual doctor; the only adequate private practitioner must have a sound general knowledge of medicine with an expert knowledge of a dozen specialties; that is to say, he must give place to a staff of doctors acting co-ordinately, for the present system, or lack of system, by which a patient wanders at random from private practitioner to specialist, from specialist to specialist ad infinitum, is altogether mischievous. ”

“ The specialist steadily grows in knowledge of his materials and of the best processes, and he gains a power of delicate observation and facility in meeting new difficulties that are impossible when attention is divided among a number of tasks. ”

“ The result sometimes is that the ambitious doctor seeks to become a specialist in at least one subject, and instals a single expensive method of treatment to which he enthusiastically subjects all his patients. ”

“ At present dietary and regimen are the happy hunting ground of the quack and that sort of volunteer specialist, half-expert, half-impostor, who flourishes in the absence of worked out and definite knowledge. The general mass of the medical profession, equipped with a little experience and a muddled training, and preposterously impeded by the private adventure conditions under which it lives, goes about pretending to the possession of precise knowledge which simply does not exist in the world. ”

“ Of course the danger with either of these specialists, the specialist of a day or the specialist of years, is that he will not leave his subject when it has been sufficiently discussed, as he will probably gauge 24the interest of others by his own preoccupation, and so may become not a blessing but a bore to his company. ”

“ In the more dangerous, obscure, or complicated forms of chronic diseases, the correct diagnosis and successful treatment of which tax all the skill possessed by the experienced specialist, the invalid will not be misled into the dangerous policy of relying upon his own judgment and treatment, but will be counseled not to postpone until too late, the employment of a skillful physician. ”

“ If I had had a cataract or any grave disease of the eye, requiring a nice operation on that delicate organ, of course I should have properly sought the aid of an expert, whose eye, hand, and judgment were trained to that special business; but in this case I don't doubt that my family doctor would have done just as well as the expert. However, I had to obey orders, and my wife would have it that I should entrust my precious person only to the most skilful specialist in each department of medical practice. ”

“ Он спец по железнодорожному делу. He's an expert on railroad matters.
специалист specialist. Наш завод нуждается в хороших специалистах. Our factory needs good specialists. — Вам нужно пойти к специалисту по сердечным болезням. You ought to go to a heart specialist. • expert. Не могу вам сказать, я в этом деле не специалист. ”

“ Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant, with all his knowledge and valuable qualities, and will "cavil on the ninth part of a hair," if it will give him a chance to show off his idle erudition. ”

“ The continuance of the work for a number of years by the same zealous observers and students, who freely interchange their information and opinions, has resulted in their training with the acuteness of specialists, corrected and generalized by the knowledge obtained from other authorities on the same or related specialties. ”

“ It teaches the specialists to remember throughout all their classifications according to departments and concepts that all specialties are connected by life and not so separated in life as they are in science, but that they are flowing and passing into one another. ”

“ In fact, it seems as if all special professions have to some extent a narrowing influence on the mind, which in ordinary cases prevents specialists forming an unbiassed judgment on any question which extends beyond the precise limits of their actual professional practice. ”

“ Nevertheless, it is possible for anyone, who has familiarised himself with the operations of science in one department, to comprehend the significance, and even to form a general estimate of the value, of the achievements of specialists in other departments. ”

“ In my days there were no specialists except cancer doctors. I think they always flourished—there were no skin specialists. A doctor was a doctor, nothing more nor less, and he was supposed to know all that was necessary of the “human form divine.” ”