The force of mind : or the mental factor in medicine / by Alfred T. Schofield.

Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The force of mind : or the mental factor in medicine / by Alfred T. Schofield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    It really becomes increasingly easy, as one listens to a paper at a medical society, to forget that a ‘ man ’ as such still exists ; while it is perfectly obvious that whole lives apparently ceurtre round the ‘ appendix ’ and the ‘ posterior nares.’ It seems almost time that the ‘ man ’ specialist appeared; one who studies the ‘ altogether,’ to use poor Trilby’s happy expression—a physician whose exclusive duty it should be to study men as men; to master the marvellous intricacies and dependencies of spirit, soul, and body; and to be skilled to know when and how to cal] on the one to help the other. With such men the profession would be complete ; but it is hard to bid farewell to the ‘ all-round men,’ having only instead as their successors such semi-mechanical scientists as we have pictured. Let it, however, be remembered that the character of such successors is not due to deficiency in the men, but rather to the defective character of the training they have received. And let it likewise be hopefully remembered that we have everywhere amongst us those ‘irregular regulars ’ who refuse to be bound by the traditions of the schools. Our best have owned the rare dramatic power Which gives to sympathy its lifting hour ; Go learn of them, the masters of our Art, To trust that wise consultant called the heart. There are among us those who haply please To think our business is to treat disease, And aU unknowingly lack this lesson still, ’Tis not the body, but the man is ill.i Apart from the general character of a training that produces a thousand careful observers for every exact • Dr. s. Weir Mitchell, The Physician, Philad. The man forgotten in his seventy sub- divisions. A ‘ man ’ specialist required. ‘ Not the body, but the man is ill.’