I began, somewhat discursively, by showing how much care the masters of
my art gave even in past days to matters of diet and modes of life. This
is still to-day a test of larger applicability. There are those of my
profession who have a credulity about the action of drugs, a belief in
their supreme control and exactness of effect which amounts to
superstition, and fills many of us with amazement. This form of idolatry
is at times the dull-witted child of laziness, or it is a queer form of
self-esteem, which sets the idol of self-made opinion on too firm a base
to be easily shaken by the rudeness of facts. But, if you watched these
men, you would find them changing their idols. Such too profound belief
in mere drugs is apt, especially in the lazy thinker, to give rise to
neglect of more natural aids, and these tendencies are strengthened and
helped by the dislike of most patients to follow a schedule of life, and
by the comfort they seem to find in substituting three pills a day for a
troublesome obedience to strict rules of diet, of exercise, and of work.

The doctor who gives much medicine and many medicines, who is
continually changing them, and who does not insist with care on knowing
all about your habits as to diet, mealtimes, sleep, modes of work, and
hours of recreation, is, on the whole, one to avoid. The family doctor
is most of all apt to fail as to these details, especially if he be an
overworked victim of routine, and have not that habitual vigilance of
duty which should be an essential part of his value. He is supposed to
have some mysterious knowledge of your constitution, and yet may not
have asked you a medical question in months or years. Too much is taken
for granted, and inefficient opinions are the outcome of carelessness.
Every new case in a household should be dealt with as if it were a
stranger's, and outside familiarity should not be allowed to breed
contempt of caution in study or lead to half measures. Every consultant
will agree with me that this kind of social nearness of the doctor to