Common sense and Treatment
Common sense is as necessary in attempting to correct symptoms of developing disease as it is in treating well- developed disease—and for that matter even in attempting to live rationally. A case or two mentioned here will illustrate this. A great many people do not want to know if there is something wrong with them physically. They are content to proceed in ignorance of conditions that may be developing, conditions that sooner or later, often quickly, will spell their doom if allowed to continue. While going along they bolster up themselves with optimistic thoughts, with the auto-sugges¬tion that they are “all right,” with self-hypnotism into the belief that there is and can be nothing the matter with them, or that if certain symptoms develop they will be able to.wear them off. Many even acknowledge that they fear the exam¬ining physician will discover some ailment or developing ailment; and a great many fear they will be advised to have operations. These very fears should send these people to physicians for examinations, in order that they may know whether they are sound or diseased.
Those who always have relied upon doctors for treatment and who have never attempted to learn anything about their bodies, their needs and rational living so as to prevent develop¬ment of disease naturally may fear discovery of pathological or serious functional disturbances. If anything of this nature is found they naturally feel compelled to follow the physi¬cian’s advice.
This is why so many people submit to surgical operations and to virus inoculations as well as to medical treatment up¬on the first suggestion by their physicians—forgetting or not knowing that, in an individual case, frequently there are dif¬ferences of opinion among physicians as to the nature of an illness and the proper mode of treatment for the condition found. Because of this difference of opinion and before the suggestion and advice of the first doctor is taken as final, a diagnosis of at least one other physician should substantiate the first if the diagnosis and prognosis are grave. These doctors should not be acquainted with or have any connection directly with the family physician.