"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.
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