would
be promptly supplied; and the gasp with which the patient would
acknowledge the truth of the suggestion was worth traveling miles to
see.

Of course, you pay no attention to any statement of the patient which
flatly contradicts the evidence of your own senses. But even where
patients, through some preconceived notion, or from false ideas of shame
or discredit attaching to some particular disease, are trying to mislead
you, the very vigor of their efforts will often reveal their secret,
just as the piteous broken-winged utterings of the mother partridge
reveal instantly to the eye of the bird-lover the presence of the young
which she is trying to lure him away from. Only let a patient talk
enough about his or her symptoms, and the truth will leak out.

The attitude of impatient incredulity toward the stories of our
patients, typified by the story of that great surgeon, but greater bear,
Dr. John Abernethy, has passed, never to return. When a lady of rank
came into his consulting-room, and, having drawn off her wraps and
comfortably settled herself in her chair, launched out into a luxurious
recital of symptoms, including most of her family history and
adventures, he, after listening about ten minutes pulled out his watch
and looked at it. The lady naturally stopped, open-mouthed. "Madam, how
long do you think it will take you to complete the recital of your
symptoms?" "Oh, well,"--the lady floundered, embarrassed,--"I hardly
know." "Well, do you think you could finish in three-quarters of an
hour?" Well, she supposed she could, probably. "Very well, madam. I have
an operation at the hospital in the next street. Pray continue with the
recital of your symptoms, and I will return in three-quarters of an hour
and proceed with the consideration of your case!"

When you can spare the time,--and no time is wasted which is spent in
getting a thorough and exhaustive knowledge of a serious case,--it is as
good as a play to let even your hypochondriac patients, and those who
are suffering chiefly from "nervous prosperity" in its most acute form,
set forth their agonies and their afflictions in their fullest and most
luxurious length, breadth, and thickness, watching meanwhile the come
and go of the lines about the face-dials, the changes of the color, the
sparkling and dulling of the eye, the droop or pain-cramp, or luxurious
loll of each group of muscles, and quietly draw your own conclusions
from it all. Many and many a