TREATING PATIENTS WHO RESIDE AT A DISTANCE.
We can treat many chronic diseases as successfully without as with a personal consultation, as our vast experience enables us to correctly determine the malady from which the patient is suffering, from a history of the symptoms, and answers to questions furnished. We have not seen one person in five hundred of those whom we have cured.
Some may suppose that a physician cannot obtain, through correspondence, a sufficiently accurate idea of the condition of a patient to enable him to treat the case successfully; but a large experience in this practice has proved the contrary to be true, for some of the most remarkable cures have been effected through the medium of correspondence. In most long-continued cases, the patient has thought over his symptoms hundreds of times. The location of every pain, whether acute or mild, constant or occasional, and the circumstances under which it occurs, have been carefully noted. He has observed whether he had a rush of blood to the head, was feverish or chilly, whether troubled with cold hands and feet, whether full of blood, or pale and bloodless; and he states these matters with accuracy and common sense when writing to us, for he has a very good, if not a professional, knowledge of the relative importance of these symptoms. So in regard to digestion, he states what kinds of food agree with him, or whether he is troubled with excessive acidity or a flatulent condition of the stomach. He also informs us whether his tongue is coated and bilious, or clean and healthy, and gives many other particulars too various to enumerate, by which we are enabled to gain a perfect understanding of the case. If his description be not sufficiently complete to enable us to obtain a definite understanding of the case, he is requested to answer a list of important questions which are sent him. The people are far more intelligent in these matters than physicians are generally willing to admit. A patient is often confused while being personally examined by a physician, and gives imperfect or incorrect answers. After he has left the presence of the physician, he finds that he has failed to enumerate many of the most important symptoms. In consulting by letter, the patient is not embarrassed, he states the exact symptoms, and carefully reads over the letter to see if it is a complete and accurate description of his sufferings. In this way he conveys a much better idea of the case than if present in person, and subjected to the most thorough questioning and cross-examination. The timid lady and nervous young man write just as they feel; and one important reason why we have had such superior success in treating intricate and delicate diseases, is because we have obtained such true and natural statements of the cases from these letters, many of which are perfect pen-pictures of disease. As bank-tellers and cashiers, who daily handle large quantities of currency, can infallibly detect spurious money by a glance at the engraving or a touch of the paper, so the experienced physician, by his great familiarity with disease, becomes equally skilled in detecting the nature and extent of a chronic malady from a written description of its symptoms.