And so Nan knew that one thing to be considered
was the family, and another the individual variation, and she began
to recognize the people who might be treated fearlessly, because they
were safe to form a league with against any ailment, being responsive
to medicines, and straightforward in their departure from or return to
a state of health; others being treacherous and hard to control; full
of surprises, and baffling a doctor with their feints and follies of
symptoms; while all the time Death himself was making ready for a
last, fatal siege; these all being the representatives of types which
might be found everywhere. Often Dr. Leslie would be found eagerly
praising some useful old-fashioned drugs which had been foolishly
neglected by those who liked to experiment with newer remedies and be
"up with the times," as they called their not very intelligent
dependence upon the treatment in vogue at the moment among the younger
men of certain cliques, to some of whom the brilliant operation was
more important than its damaging result. There was, even in those
days, a haphazard way of doctoring, in which the health of the patient
was secondary to the promotion of new theories, and the young scholar
who could write a puzzlingly technical paper too often outranked the
old practitioner who conquered some malignant disorder single-handed,
where even the malpractice of the patient and his friends had stood
like a lion in the way.
But Dr. Leslie was always trying to get at the truth, and nobody
recognized more clearly the service which the reverent and truly
progressive younger men were rendering to the profession.
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