Evening star., 1914-10-18

if your legs were swollen, it wouldn't trouble
me either"
1t was most thought1ess too when attend
ing newspaper editor to observe that his
circulation was bad. Of course the outraged
invalid leaped up, exclaiming, Circulation
bad, Doctor? Why, Man, we have the big
gest circulation in the State!"
SOMETIMES, to be sure, the doctor scores
" There is the case of the doctor who hurried
off in evident alarm, explaining to his wife,
"No, they didn't say whether the boys
book on What to Do Before the Doctor
Comes, and l must hurry and get there be-
fore she does it."
There are the cases too of honestly mis-
understood directions. A man had been
told to drink hot water for his digestion an
hour before meals "And can't do it," he
protested. HHere I've got quart down,
and I'm nearly bursting, and so far l haven't
been drinking fifteen minutes"
More tragic still is the story of Uncle Eph-
rain. His wife being unable to tell time, the
physician bade her give him his medicine
whenever the streetcar passed. On his next
visit, finding his patient alarmingly worse,
he demanded whether she had followed in
structions. "Yas, Suh,' she protested, II give
him his medicine e'vy time street car wen
pass, and kin tell yo hit KEEP me busy while
dat col'ed picnic was on dey way to de park.
But then, doctors do sometimes give such
absurd directions "There is no DANGER"
remarked one of them. @Its only car
buncle coming on the back of your neck; but
you must keep your eye on it."
DENTISTS appear at times to be treated
even less seriously than doctors. One ap-
preciates the point of view of the man who
made no objection to paying for broken
appointment; explaining that breaking an
appointment with dentist was worth every
cent that it cost.
There was consolation too in dentists
assurance that his laughing gas was per-
fectly safe. ain these times couldn't afford
to lose a patient"
But the cult of personal hygiene seems to
be carried quite to the point of a fad when
one reads such grisly advice as this, "a medi-
cal paper claims that dentists fingers carry
disease germs. Moral, Boil your dentist"
In the general onslaught upon the medical
profession even the nurses are not spared.
There was the nurse who in oral examination
declared that certain conditions demanded
eight grains of morphine and some minutes
later expressed the wish to alter her answer to
one-eighth of grain. "Too late" replied the
preoccupied examiner. @The patient is dead"
But generally the joke comes the nurses
way, as in the case of the one who explained
to the convalescent that she really couldn't
marry him: her earlier ready consent to do
so had been only a part of his treatment.
AYou see,' she went on, cts my duty to
keep patients cheerful. Why, only this
morning promised to run away with man
who has lost both legs!"
Even the druggist has been assailed; but
unwisely, for this branch of the service was
fully armed and could toss back playful
hand grenades in the form of customers
written orders. These, for example:
a "Ihaveanacutep pain in my child sdiagram.
Please give my son something to release it."
@My little baby has eat up its fathers
parish plaster. Send an anecdote quick by
the enclosed girl
What such customers would do with
Pandora's box of family medicines is
theme to make shuddering imagination re-
coil in terror. There might be survivors; but
frantic calls for the doctor would doubtless
he even more numerous than thew are tOdav