WHY IS 1T—one of our correspondents asks this week—that so
many doctors act as if their patient automatically loses his intelligence with his physical health? And why is it, 1 am tempted to add, that so many doctors lose their own intelligence when they talk about things which are not really their concern? Mr. Dickson Wright is, of course, entitled to his own opinions, and when he says, 'I am a great believer in carrying the patient along in ignorance,' he is, after all, only subscribing to an obscurantist medical atti- tude which is as old as the witch-doctor and the medicine-man. But if he does hold these views. he should keep them to himself. Can he not see the harm he does by putting into the minds of the tens of thousands of people who fear they have got, or might get, cancer the added fear that if they do get it their doctor will deceive them about it? The damage that fear of a disease does, many members of the profession (and particularly the family doctor) would agree, can be worse than the disease itself. I can think of no better way of sapping the public confidence in the medical profession than this short-sighted atti- tude.
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