The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-05-24
MEDICAL LYING
Thinks Truth Telling Is Best in Dealing With Pa tients-COnlusions Drawn from Long Practice.

Dr Richard c. Cabot in Sunday School Tinnes.)
 I was brought up as most physicians are to be truthful whenever possible,
 but to lie when the patients interest absolutely demanded it when sympa- thy. tact. and kindness forbade our tell:ey the apparently wounding or dangerous truth After practicing medicine seven years on this principle, I gradually became convinced that no man was skilled enough to make a sue cess of lying unless he kept in con stant practice The occasional liar does not always succeed even in fool
 ing his patient, although he often thinks he does.
 After these seven years of lying I
 tried the truth, and for the last eight
 years that has been my steady prac-
 tice. Let me explain, first of all, just
 what l. do and do not mean by telling
 the truth. I do not mean emptying
 my mind of all its contents before
 everyone or on every occasion. It is no ones duty to buttonhole all his
 friends on the street and, give them a dissertation on their faults and weak
 nesses. It is no ones business to force truth on people when there is no reason to suppose that it can do
 them any good. But it is everyone'S
 business to be fair and square, to deceive no one, never to be double faced.
 In the field of medicine the tenpta- tion to speak the lie of kindness is strongest. perhaps. in regard to the future progress of disease. but it is also powerful in diagnosis and in
 treatment, as a few examples will show.
 Until quite recently it was a com mon practice among physicians to tell the sufferer from early phthisiS tuber- culosis) that his disease was ''bron- chitis,' or that he had weak lungs.
 It was thought harmful to alarm the patient" and unkind to make him face the facts. Of late this pernicious habit has begun to go out of fashion as regards pythisis, because the fresh air and full feeding treatment now generally adopted gives away the nature of the malady. Publicity and the wider knowledge of disease by the general public are making it harder and harder for physicians to conceal from themselves the harm that decep- ton works. Here, as in so many other fields, tuberculosis is the enter ing wedge making for the saner treat ment of all disease. We know that to get the best results in treatment we must have the cooperation of the pa tient: in fact that he, with God to help him, must do most of the work
 Medical lies mean moral short-sight- edness. That is the cruX of the whole situation. A family conspire with
 their doctor. the servants and the nurses to keep the sick man in ignor- false hope-perhaps till his death. But how about the conspirators them selves? Some day they will be sick themselves. Whom then can, they trust? They have learned, each of them, that the trusted medical adviser, the faithful nurse, the devoted ser wants, the beloved family, will lie "for the patients good" and each ones judgment is different as to the extent of that good
 "Oh. of course, I never believe what doctors say,'' a girl of 20 said to me once. "Fve helped them lie and fix up the letters to mother too often my self"
 Lies work only so long as confidence is firm. But every lie underm1nes confidence, as in the two examples just given. So-and-so makes it more and more difficult to make either truth or falsehood effective. Finally, as in th9 story of the boy who cried "Wof,' the truth itself becomes powerless. Lies have undermined both themselves and it. Because government and war offices have lied so often in the news which they see fit to give out-"so as to avoid alarming the people'-we see the pitia spectacles of the phy- sicians about King Edward of Eng land stating that he has only mild ap- pendicitis, no cancer; telling the ab- solute truth, and being generally dis believed by the business world-de- ceived once too often.
 This short-SightednesS of the con- scientious liar is nowhere more strik- ingly known than in the lies which most doctors tell as part of treatment the lies known p1acebos or bread pills. placebos is a medicine given not for it's virtue as a drug, not for its genuine physiological action, but be- cause Cthough inerD it will make the patient think he is getting something of real value to his tissues. It is given to make him believe that some thing is being done for him, which is not the fact. Such drug works only so long as the patient is deceived fIn win f1-911 n z "I give you this medicine (quite harm | less I assure you) for it's effect on the mind. We must beat Mrs. Eddy | at her own game and by producing faith and hope in you benefit the l condition of your stomach and bowels Of course such frankness would spoil the whole game. One must carefully | and minutely explain the method in l which the drug is to be dissolved and l taken just so many minutes after l breakfast. One must go through all the forms of prescription-writing and directions or the whole struc- | ture of lies will fall. |
 But where is the harm of all this ? | Look at the patent-medicine industry | and find the partial answer-one or the i'll effects of teaching people to | believe that most diseases can be | cured by medicine in a bottle. The 1 people sum it all up. They find the | the total result of the doctors numer- l ous and costly visits in a row of medicines are cheap. The doctor is eX- i pensive. Why not skip the middleman and get the medicine direct? So the 1 patent medicine industry thrives.
 Babies are not born with a desire to swallow a drug every time they have a pain. They learn that lesson later. From whom? Ultimately from | the doctors whose wise habits have | been handed down through the aunts | and grandmothers. So the bread-pill | habit among doctors produces and | the patent-medicine habit | among patients, robs the patient of his 1 health and the doctor of his living. | Suppose the doctor told the truth; re- fused to give drugs except in the few diseases where they are really of val ue and spent his time in discovering and eradicat ting the bad habits of eat ing, drinking, smoking, loafng and | sexual vice, which produce most of the |