Impatience of the Heart

by Stefan Zweig

Can you really not know the oldest trick in the doctor’s book? When we ourselves are stumped, and have no idea what to do, we just play for time and fool around, keeping the patient busy with silly talk and silly activities so we needn’t reveal how helpless we are. And, fortunately for us, the patient’s inner nature is our trustiest accomplice in the deceit. It’s natural that she feels better! Every treatment, whether it’s eating lemons or drinking milk or applying hot or cold compresses, initially brings about some change in the body and offers a new stimulus which the patient’s eternal optimism takes for improvement. This kind of auto-suggestion is our finest helper – it’ll help even the stupidest asses in the medical business. But there’s one catch here – as soon as the excitement of novelty has lost its edge, reaction sets in, and then you have to change course pretty quickly and find another treatment to fool the patient with; that’s the kind of fraudulent stratagem we in the profession keep up, in hopeless cases, as long as it takes, until perhaps the true, correct method just happens to be found.