"Yes—in a way," said Beason, adjusting his microscope, "but then I never was sick much."
"Well, I didn't mean just taking one's pulse," she laughed. "It seems to me they mean more than prescriptions. For one thing, I think it's rather amusing the way they all practice Christian Science."
"Why—what do you mean?" he demanded, aroused now, and shocked.
"Oh, I've come to the conclusion that a modern, first-class doctor is a Christian Scientist who preserves his sanity"—she paused, laughing a little at Beason's bewildered face, and at the thought of how little her formula would be appreciated in either camp. "I've noticed it down at Dr. Parkman's office," she went on. "It's quite a study to listen to him at the telephone. He will wrangle around all sorts of corners to get patients to admit something is in better shape than it was yesterday, and though they called up to say they were worse, they end in admitting they are much better. He just forces them into saying something is better, and then he says, triumphantly, 'Oh—that's fine!'—and the patient rings off immensely cheered up."
"That's a kind of trickery, though," said Beason.
"Pretty good kind of trickery, if it helps people get well."
"Well I shouldn't care to be a practicing physician," Beason declared, "just for that reason. That sort of business would be very distasteful to me."
Ernestine was about to say something, and then relegated it to the things better left unsaid; but she permitted herself a wise little smile.
"I don't think it's such an awfully high grade of work," he went on. "In a way it is—of course. But there's so much repetition and routine; so much that doesn't count scientifically at all—doesn't count for anything but the patient."
"But what is science for?" she demanded, aggravated now. "Has medical science any value save in its relation to human beings?"