But I was not going to content myself with mere theory in this matter; I resolved to make regular application of it. I visited patients, determined all diseases according to their circumstances and symptoms, explained their causes, and gave also prescriptions for their cure. But in this practice things turned out very comically. If a patient told me some of the symptoms of his disease, I guessed from them the nature of the disease itself, and inferred the presence of the other symptoms. If the patient said that he could trace none of these, I stubbornly insisted on their being present all the same. The conversation therefore sometimes came to this:—
I. "You have headache also."
Patient. "No."
I. "But you must have headache."
As many symptoms are common to several diseases, I took not infrequently quid pro quo. Prescriptions I could never keep in my head, so that, when I prescribed anything, I was obliged to go home first and turn up my Gaziopilatium. At length I began even to make up drugs myself according to Voit's prescriptions. How this succeeded, may be imagined. It had at least this good result, that I saw something more was surely required for a practical physician than I understood at the time.