Of course, this treatment in and of itself would appear
too transparent, and would fail to inspire the patient
with a proper confidence. But nowadays this element is
supplied by the work of the analytical laboratory. Whatever
is wrong with the patient, the doctor insists on snipping
off parts and pieces and extracts of him and sending them
mysteriously away to be analysed. He cuts off a lock of
the patient's hair, marks it, "Mr. Smith's Hair, October,
1910." Then he clips off the lower part of the ear, and
wraps it in paper, and labels it, "Part of Mr. Smith's
Ear, October, 1910." Then he looks the patient up and
down, with the scissors in his hand, and if he sees any
likely part of him he clips it off and wraps it up. Now
this, oddly enough, is the very thing that fills the
patient up with that sense of personal importance which
is worth paying for. "Yes," says the bandaged patient,
later in the day to a group of friends much impressed,
"the doctor thinks there may be a slight anaesthesia of
the prognosis, but he's sent my ear to New York and my
appendix to Baltimore and a lock of my hair to the editors
of all the medical journals, and meantime I am to keep
very quiet and not exert myself beyond drinking a hot
Scotch with lemon and nutmeg every half-hour." With that
he sinks back faintly on his cushions, luxuriously happy.

And yet, isn't it funny?

You and I and the rest of us--even if we know all this--as
soon as we have a pain within us, rush for a doctor as