Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXIII. More Doctors
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régime with nothing the matter with them except
an idle life, too much money and a craving for
being ill and being visited by the doctor. What
I saw seemed to me as least as interesting as
angina pectoris. How was it done, what was
his method? As far as I could make it out the
method consisted in putting these women to bed
at first sight with a stunning diagnosis of some
grave ailment and to allow them to recover
slowly by gradually lifting the load of the
suggestion from their confused brains. To classify
my colleague as the most dangerous doctor I
had ever met was easy. To classify him as a
mere charlatan I was not prepared. That I
considered him as an able doctor was of course
quite compatible with his being a charlatan—
the two go well together, the chief danger of
charlatans lies there. But the charlatan operates
single-handed like the pick-pocket and this man
had taken me to his nursing home to demonstrate
his most damaging cases with great pride. Of
course he was a charlatan, but surely a charlatan
of an unusual type, well worth a closer study.
The more I saw of him the more was I struck
with the morbid acceleration of his whole mental
machinery, his restless eyes, the extraordinary
rapidity of his speech. But it was the way he
handled digitalis, our most powerful but most
dangerous weapon in combating heart diseases,
that sounded the first note of alarm in my ears.
One night I received a note from the daughter
of one of his patients begging me to come at
once at the urgent request of the nurse. The
nurse took me aside and said she had sent for
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