Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-05-22
MIND AND MEDICINE
BV H. AddingtOn Bruce

IN discussions for the benefit of medical stu
dents planning to set up as general
practitioners a SIM ular omission is too
frequently made by their professional adj
visers.
The prospective physicians rightly
urged to familarize themselves with mod
ern diagnostic methods. The Importance of
laboratory training is duly impressed upon
them. Ability to make regional examina-
tions, to practice minor surgery, and perform
emergency operations, is emphasized p1 e.
requisite to their success.
And all such advice is undeniably excel
lent.
But not often enough is it so much as
limited to the budding medicos that for their
own good and the welfare Of their patients,
they should make it point to master the
fundamentals of psychology, particularly the
psychology of the emotions and the psychol-
ogy of suggestion. This for two chief rea-
sons.
The first is found in the well-established
fact that the great majority of people seen
by the general practitioner are more in need
of mental reconstruction than they are of
medicine
Many come to him suffering from chronic
headaches, backaches, insomnia, indigestion
and divers other disease symptoms which
are the product of faulty thinking rather
than of any specific bodily disease. Even
truly alarming symptoms may be thus
caused. AS DR.. Hugh T. Patrick recently
remarked, in the course of an address to
the Chicago Institute Of Medicine:
"To speak of the hyperacidity and gastric
distress of financial insufficiency, the dys-
menorrhea of domestic disharmony, and the
tachycardia of Industrial futility may sound
incongruous. But sometimes that is what
they are"
Pills and powders will do sue patients
little good. Yet the physicians ignorant Of
the subtle effects of emotional states on the
health of the body is apt to put reliance in
pills and powders precisely because he fails
to appreciate the real source of the disorder
he is called upon to treat
And should he appreciate it, he will still
be helpless if he has failed to acquire, either
intuitively or through systematic study,
knowledge of how to aid his patients to wiser
thinking. This is the second chief reason
for the study of psychology by doctors.
To tell a patient with an emotional dys-
pepsia, "Your trouble is imaginary; forget
it," is method still fashionable with many
physicians. 1t only costs them patients with
out doing the patients one whit of good.
Whereas the physician fortified by psy-
GEOLOGICAL insight can and will guide his
Imaginary invalds' to the notwithstanding
haven of sound thinking and emotional con-
troll With the well warranted result that
his reputation will steadily grow and his
sphere of beneficent influence steadily ex-
pand.
By all means, therefore, let the doctor who
would achieve the largest possible success
make study of psychology Today he can
readily do so with the help of textbooks
written with the needs of physicians special
ly in view
And should any doctor or prospective doc
tor reading this desire to procure such text
books shall be glad to assist him in select
ing them. letter to me in the care OF this
newspaper, inclosing stamped and address
ed envelope, will bring to it's writer list
of some of the best psychological works for
physicians
copyright, 1920, by the Associated News
papers.)