Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working-People

by John Brown

There are many reasons for this, outside of yourselves, and there is no need of your being proud of it or indeed of anything else; but it is something to be thankful for, in the midst of all your hardships, that you in this have more of the power and of the luxury of doing immediate, visible good. You pay this debt in ready-money, as you do your meal and your milk; at least you have very short credit, and the shorter the better. Now, the Doctor has his duties to you, and it is well that he should know them, and that you should know them too; for it will be long before you and he can do without each other. You keep each other alive. Disease, accidents, pain, and death reign everywhere, and we call one another mortals, as if our chief peculiarity was that we must die, and you all know how death came into this world. "By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned"; and disease, disorder, and distress are the fruits of sin, as truly as that apple grew on that forbidden tree. You have nowadays all sorts of schemes for making bad men good, and good men better. The world is full of such schemes, some of them wise and some foolish; but to be wise they must all go on the principle of lessening misery by lessening sin; so that the old weaver at Kilmarnock, who at a meeting for abolishing slavery, the corn laws, and a few more things, said, "Mr. Preses, I move that we abolish Original Sin," was at least beginning at the right end. Only fancy what a world it would be, what a family any of ours would be, when everybody did everything that was right, and nothing that was wrong, say for a week! The world would not know itself. It would be inclined to say with the "wee bit wifiekie," though reversing the cause, "This is no me." I am not going to say more on this point. It is not my parish. But you need none of you be long ignorant of who it is who has abolished death, and therefore vanquished sin.

Well, then, it is the duty of the Doctor in the first place, to cure us; in the second, to be kind to us; in the third, to be true to us; in the fourth, to keep our secrets; in the fifth, to warn us, and, best of all, to forewarn us; in the sixth, to be grateful to us; and, in the last, to keep his time and his temper.

And, first, it is the duty of the Doctor to cure you,—if he can. That is what we call him in for; and a doctor, be he never so clever and delightful, who doesn't cure, is like a mole-catcher who can't catch moles, or a watchmaker who can do everything but make your watch go. Old Dr. Pringle of Perth, when preaching in the country, found his shoes needed mending, and he asked the brother whom he was assisting to tell him of good cobbler, or as he called him, a snab. His friend mentioned a "Tammas Rattray, a godly man, and an elder." "But," said Dr. Pringle, in his snell way, "can he mend my shoon? that's what I want; I want a shoemaker; I'm not wanting an elder." It turned out that Tammas was a better elder than a shoemaker. A doctor was once attending a poor woman in labor; it was a desperate case, requiring a cool head and a firm will; the good man—for he was good—had neither of these, and, losing his presence of mind, gave up the poor woman as lost, and retired into the next room to pray for her. Another doctor, who, perhaps, wanted what the first one had, and certainly had what he wanted, brains and courage, meanwhile arrived, and called out, "Where is Doctor ——?" "O, he has gone into the next room to pray!" "Pray! tell him to come here this moment, and help me; he can work and pray too"; and with his assistance the snell doctor saved that woman's life. This, then, is the Doctor's first duty to you,—to cure you,—and for this he must, in the first place, be up to his business; he must know what to do, and, secondly, he must be able to do it; he must not merely do as a pointer dog does, stand and say, "There it is," and no more, he must point and shoot too. And let me tell you, moreover, that unless a man likes what he is at, and is in earnest, and sticks to it, he will no more make a good doctor than a good anything else. Doctoring is not only a way for a man to do good by curing disease, and to get money to himself for doing this, but it is also a study which interests for itself alone, like geology, or any other science; and moreover it is a way to fame and the glory of the world; all these four things act upon the mind of the Doctor, but unless the first one is uppermost, his patient will come off second-best with him; he is not the man for your lives or for your money.

They tell a story, which may not be word for word true, but it has truth and a great principle in it, as all good stories have. It is told of one of our clever friends, the French, who are so knowing in everything. A great French doctor was taking an English one round the wards of his hospital; all sort of miseries going on before them, some dying, others longing for death, all ill; the Frenchman was wonderfully eloquent about all their diseases, you would have thought he saw through them, and knew all their secret wheels like looking into a watch or into a glass beehive. He told his English friend what would be seen in such a case, when the body was opened! He spent some time in this sort of work, and was coming out, full of glee, when the other doctor said: "But, Doctor ——, you haven't prescribed for these cases." "O, neither I have!" said he, with a grumph and a shrug; "I quite forgot that"; that being the one thing why these poor people were there, and why he was there too. Another story of a Frenchman, though I dare say we could tell it of ourselves. He was a great professor, and gave a powerful poison as a medicine for an ugly disease of the skin. He carried it very far, so as to weaken the poor fellow, who died, just as the last vestige of the skin disease died too. On looking at the dead body, quite smooth and white, and also quite dead, he said, "Ah, never mind; he was dead cured."

So let me advise you, as, indeed, your good sense will advise yourselves, to test a Doctor by this: Is he in earnest? Does he speak little and do much? Does he make your case his first care? He may, after that, speak of the weather, or the money-market; he may gossip, and even haver; or he may drop, quietly and shortly, some "good words,"—the fewer the better; something that causes you to think and feel; and may teach you to be more of the Publican than of the Pharisee, in that story you know of, when they two went up to the temple to pray; but, generally speaking, the Doctor should, like the rest of us, stick to his trade and mind his business.

Secondly, It is the Doctor's duty to be kind to you. I mean by this, not only to speak kindly, but to be kind, which includes this and a great deal more, though a kind word, as well as a merry heart, does good like a medicine. Cheerfulness, or rather cheeriness, is a great thing in a Doctor; his very foot should have "music in't, when he comes up the stair." The Doctor should never lose his power of pitying pain, and letting his patient see this and feel it. Some men, and they are often the best at their proper work, can let their hearts come out only through their eyes; but it is not the less sincere, and to the point; you can make your mouth say what is not true; you can't do quite so much with your eyes. A Doctor's eye should command, as well as comfort and cheer his patient; he should never let him think disobedience or despair possible. Perhaps you think Doctors get hardened by seeing so much suffering; this is not true. Pity as a motive, as well as a feeling ending in itself, is stronger in an old Doctor than in a young, so he be made of the right stuff. He comes to know himself what pain and sorrow mean, what their weight is, and how grateful he was or is for relief and sympathy.

Thirdly, It is his duty to be true to you. True in word and in deed. He ought to speak nothing but the truth, as to the nature, and extent, and issues of the disease he is treating; but he is not bound, as I said you were, to tell the whole truth,—that is for his own wisdom and discretion to judge of; only, never let him tell an untruth, and let him be honest enough, when he can't say anything definite, to say nothing. It requires some courage to confess our ignorance, but it is worth it. As to the question, often spoken of,—telling a man he is dying,—the Doctor must, in the first place, be sure the patient is dying; and, secondly, that it is for his good, bodily and mental, to tell him so: he should almost always warn the friends, but, even here, cautiously.

Fourthly, It is his duty to keep your secrets. There are things a Doctor comes to know and is told which no one but he and the Judge of all should know; and he is a base man, and unworthy to be in such a noble profession as that of healing, who can betray what he knows must injure, and in some cases may ruin.

Fifthly, It is his duty to warn you against what is injuring your health. If he finds his patient has brought disease upon himself by sin, by drink, by overwork, by over-eating, by over-anything, it is his duty to say so plainly and firmly, and the same with regard to the treatment of children by their parents; the family doctor should forewarn them; he should explain, as far as he is able and they can comprehend them, the Laws of Health, and so tell them how to prevent disease, as well as do his best to cure it. What a great and rich field there is here for our profession, if they and the public could only work well together! In this, those queer, half-daft, half-wise beings, the Chinese, take a wiser way; they pay their Doctor for keeping them well, and they stop his pay as long as they are ill!

Sixthly, It is his duty to be grateful to you; 1st, for employing him, whether you pay him in money or not, for a Doctor, worth being one, makes capital, makes knowledge, and therefore power, out of every case he has; 2dly, for obeying him and getting better. I am always very much obliged to my patients for being so kind as to be better, and for saying so; for many are ready enough to say they are worse, not so many to say they are better, even when they are; and you know our Scotch way of saying, "I'm no that ill," when "I" is in high health, or, "I'm no ony waur," when "I" is much better. Don't be niggards in this; it cheers the Doctor's heart, and it will lighten yours.