The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-02-01

certain prestige among the waiting pa tients, and they gaze almost enviously
 at him, wondering what his sickness is
 and concluding, probably, that he has been operated on and must have been a livery bad case. Dispensary patients are Imuch like some of the rest of us, and l the man with the worst cough, while he is not exactly envied, is the center of
 considerable attention He has his own ! opinions too, and undoubtedly eXperi- | ences a slight pique at the suggestion
 that any one suffers more than him. | self
 l When the professor decides to use the show patient that worthy is taken into | the lecture room before the assembled 1 students. There he is stripped, if neces-
 sary, and the case is thoroughly gone
 over in detail If it is typical of the class to which it belongs the professor
 may spend his whole hour featuring
 upon this one case. The patient is re-
 quired to undergo various tests and is 1 kept busy going through his paces, to
 use the expression of one of them. l Through long usage he has become a 1 specialist in his own disease and brings
 out his various symptoms in an illus trative manner. The most expert do l indeed sometimes exhibit symptoms
 which they do not have but which
 should be present in a typical case.
 Learning from experience what the ex- | aminer is looking for they gladly give it to him. Thus, in measure, they be-
 come fakirs, a condition however, which, provided they are expert, en- t.,a 1A, I,nfY
 value as teaching material. When q.
 really good patient is ably presented to
 a class at a medical school the students
 see a picture which is not readily for
 gotten, and the value of this form of
 teaching is testified to by the fact that
 clinical lectures are more largely att
 tended than any of the other college ex-
 ercises.
 In kind the show patients differ.
 There are men with limbs missing, others with peculiar joint affections, va-
 rious forms of diseases of the nervous
 system, diseases of muscles, anomalous
 anatomical development, in fact every
 chronic ailment which flesh is heir to. Perhaps the most successful of these show patients, from a financial point of view, was a man who could dislocate most of the larger and some of the smaller joints at will by mere muscular effort. This man Is, possibly, responsi ble for more accurate knowledge of the methods of reduction of dislocations than any thousand persons in exist ence. He would lie on table for an hour at a time while medical students, under the direction of an Instructor G.,f.t lto- .ff f1,o IteI1 cation and then attempted reduction keeping at it until familiar with the manipulation and perfect in their exc cution.
 This mans condition prevented him from earning living by manual labor, | and his mental attachments were insuf- | f1cient to maintain him, yet his income i was sufficient to enable him to support | himself and family in comfortable cir cumstances His fee was $5 an hour, | and during the sessions of the medical { colleges it was a poor week that he could not get in five hours work. When i things were dull at the colleges he ex- hibited himself at the homes of physi- clans who invited their friends to in- dule in feast of dislocations.
 All tAdllple OI dluIililouS uGNSlUp- i ment was presented in the man whose vscera were transposed; his heart be- ing on the right side, his liver on the left and so on. As such a condition as this can only be demonstrated to a few students at time this patient was not in great demand. He was middle class man.
 The man who simulated epileptic seiz- ures so successfully as to deceive many physicians is an example of what the | degenerate will do to avoid work. This man has been missing from the circle of medical schools for some time, but he was very useful as subject, because, outside of a hospital, medical students can rarely see an epileptic attack. The teachers were, therefore, glad to avail themselves of this mans cunning sim llations for the students good The man himself took great morbid in terest in the perfection of his attacks. even going to the extreme of biting his :. tongue.
 One of the most recent acquisitions to this most peculiar of professions in his country is a hypnotic subject, This young man achieved certain notoriety abroad as the subject of the elder Char ,ot, and appeared at the clinics of Paris md Brussels. Repeated hypnosis has produced a condition so susceptible to suggest that it is only necessary to tell lie patient that you are going to hyp- notice him in order to accomplish that 'eat Constant concentration of his attention upon himself has made him ,apable of controlling the action of his leart, and even the reaction of his pu- oils. Being news to the country this nan seeks the bulk of his income else where than at the medical colleges. He ravels about with professional hyp- lotist, and is the man who does the