“But take that same prosperous citizen today. How many specialists would he have to call in before he could consider his case properly attended to? Seven diseases, seven specialists, you say? Oh, more than that. First thing he’d have to send for the primary diagnostician, if he wished to do it in thoroughly up-to-date style. Well, the primary diagnostician would come in to find out, first, what was the matter with him. He looks the patient all over and takes flash-light pictures of his interior, makes a card index of all the things the matter with him and then calls in his stenographer and dictates a circular letter to a collection of specialists, asking them to drop around at their leisure and confirm his diagnoses. And do they proceed then to treat the patient? Not for a minute. They are the secondary diagnosticians. Each has his specialty and wouldn’t dream of encroaching on any other specialist’s territory. The gout man looks only for gout—and he finds what he is looking for. The indigestion expert does the same—and it can’t escape his eagle eye. It’s the same all down the line.
“When the seven secondary diagnosticians have finished their job the patient is presented with seven neatly-inscribed charts, showing the general plan and location of his various troubles—and seven courteously worded communications beginning with precisely the same words: ‘For professional services to date.’
“Now it’s time to call in the specialists who administer the treatment. Seven more of ’em. Why, nowadays the house of a rich man who’s got something the matter with his insides looks like the convention hall of the American Medical Association during a well-attended session. And that’s not all. You not only have to have a different doctor for each disease, but a whole lot of brand-new diseases we never heard of in my time have been invented. Back in the old days in Athens there were only about a dozen ailments a fellow could acquire. If he escaped these he never had to call in a doctor. But today, as any specialist will tell you, there are about fifty-seven varieties of throat trouble alone. You can have eighty-six different things the matter with your liver, while the various kinds of indigestion, plain and fancy, would fill a book. In our time, too, we did mighty little tinkering with the human frame with tools and things. We knew about the appendix, but we failed to perceive its commercial possibilities. We thought it had been put there for some wise purpose—but it didn’t occur to us that it might be a financial one. The price of a modern appendicitis operation would have supported one of our old Greek physicians in luxury for three years.
“It was the same with tonsils. We’d as soon have thought of cutting off a man’s tongue as taking out his tonsils. Every young doctor had to take an oath—the Hippocratic oath, I called it—that he would give everybody the benefit of his services without regard to money. Nowadays if doctors take the oath I presume a good many of them keep their fingers crossed. I agree that when a doctor is called out of his bed in the middle of the night, to treat an old fellow who is suffering from nothing except fatty degeneration of the pocketbook, it’s quite a temptation to relieve him of a substantial share of that trouble. Some folk think they aren’t getting full attention unless they are charged enough to make them feel it in the pocket nerve. Increased wages of workingmen are bound to enlarge the number of millionaire medicos.”
“So, you think, Doctor, the practice of medicine has become somewhat commercialized since your day?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. I did not wish to reflect on my successors. That would not be professional. I’m simply sorry that back in 400 B. C. we were not alive to our opportunities. Think of our allowing Croesus, the richest man that ever lived, to go around with his appendix intact! Why, I sat up with him all one night when he had acute inflammation of the imagination and thought he saw pink Egyptian crocodiles crawling up the window-shades, and only charged him two dollars!
“No, understand me. I’m not finding fault with the twentieth century doctors. I’m only envious of their opportunities. Your modern doctor dashes around town in his automobile and calls on twenty patients a day. I had an old ox team, non-self-starting, that couldn’t take the smallest hill on high and had a maximum speed on the level of two miles an hour. While I was attending a patient at one end of Athens a patient at the other end had time to get well without my assistance. That was discouraging to any young fellow just as his practice and professional beard were beginning to grow. And nowadays they tell me you have allopaths, and homeopaths and osteopaths—but you must remember that all paths lead to the grave.”
“Why is that last joke just like you, Doctor?” I interposed in self-defense.
“I give it up. Why is it?”
“Because it dates from at least 400 B. C.”