Your ShelfYour Projects

HIS FIRST PATIENT

6%

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 15, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 49.

Read the full edition

HIS FIRST PATIENT.

A PHYSICIAN who now stands very high in his profession tells with great enjoyment of his first visit to a patient, and its amusing result. "My diploma and a well-filled medicine case and $5.00 in cash comprised my earthly possessions when I landed in B., then a small town in a Western State.
"Renting a small, unfurnished room, I printed my name in bold black letters on a piece of pasteboard and put it in one of the windows, that opened upon the main street of the town. Then I was ready for business. But the people seemed discouragingly healthy; and the outlook was not promising.
"It was three weeks before I had a call. Then there came to my door an elderly, angular woman, who asked:—
" 'Be you the doc?'
" 'I am,' I replied, looking as wise and dignified as a man could who had been called doc.
"She then said that her 'old man' was 'ailin' somewhere,' and asked me to go and discover if I could what was 'the matter of him.'"
"No young recruit ever went forth to battle with more anxiety than I went forth to meet my first patient. I cannot to this day account for the nervousness that possessed me. My knees literally shook as I entered the room in which my patient lay.
"Making an effort to look wise, and trying hard to affect the manner of an experienced physician, I said:—
" 'Put out your pulse.'"
"Realizing the mistake I had made, and magnifying it into a most horrible one, I made matters worse by saying:—
" 'No, I meant let me feel of your tongue!'"
" 'What for?'"
" 'Oh, it was only a slip of the tongue!' said I, with what must have been a ghastly smile. 'Are you very sick?'"
" 'That's what I want you to find out,' said the patient.
" 'Oh, yes; to be sure!' I managed to say. Then I went through the usual formula, gaining a little in self-confidence, but was not greatly elated, you may judge, when the man, eyeing me keenly, said on my departure:—
" 'Green hand at the bizness, ain't you? I guess you don't know as much as you think you do.'"
"I did not seem myself to know as much as I thought I did."—Exchange.