To muse themselves in silent solitudes:
She came with hectic glow, and wasted cheek,
And still the maiden pined more wan and weak,
Pale like the second bow: yet would she speak
The words of Hope, even while she passed away,
Amid the closing clouds, and faded ray by ray.”
Shall this hope, delusive as it so commonly is, be demolished by the physician? Clearly it, in most cases at least, should not be. For in very many cases it manifestly prolongs life, and adds to its comfort and its usefulness, and in some cases it proves not to be as delusive as perhaps even the physician is disposed to consider it. Recovery does now and then occur in cases of true consumption, and even in some which are quite advanced. The changes observed by means of the stethoscope in the progress of some cases which have ended in recovery, and the examinations of the lungs of those who have died of some other malady, show conclusively that tubercular consumption is not necessarily a fatal disease. Every physician who has seen much of this disease has occasionally witnessed facts confirmatory of this statement.[43]
In concluding this chapter I remark, that the obvious rule in regard to the use to be made of hope as a curative agent is this—that its cordial influence should always be employed, so far as it can be done consistently with truth, and no farther. And the bare fact that a case has ended fatally, when the physician has encouraged in the patient the hope of a recovery, should by no means, as is often done, be considered as proof that he has dealt falsely. He may have encouraged the patient in good faith. For the physician, however wise and skilful he may be, is not able to foresee with any certainty the final event of sickness so frequently as is commonly supposed, and in all doubtful cases he is bound to give the patient the benefit of all the hope of which the symptoms will admit.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] The mortality of consumption has been undoubtedly increased by the very prevalent, but erroneous, opinion, that when this disease has only fairly begun it is never arrested, but sooner or later ends in death. The definite opinions, too, sometimes given to the patient as to the supposed hopelessness of the case, founded upon the revelations of the stethoscope to the exclusion of other evidence, have produced the same effect.