Publisher's Synopsis
From the Introduction.
THIS book is written to exemplify three forms of team-work which are now tending to ennoble medicine.
1. Social service-the modern type of what used to be called philanthropy-is drawing nearer and nearer to medicine. Public health and the extermination of disease, -that most fruitful cause of poverty, of misery, and of crime, -are the ideals for which doctors and social workers are joining hands to-day. When the doctor looks for the root-cause of most of the sickness that he is called upon to help, he finds social conditions, such as vice, ignorance, overcrowding, sweatshops, and poverty. When the social worker analyzes the reason why a family is in need, why a bread-winner is slack or shiftless, why girls go wrong, and boys are caught stealing, he finds physical conditions, medical conditions-poor nutrition, bad air, alcoholism, tuberculosis, injuries in factories-staring him in the face.
Therefore team-work of doctor and social worker is called for, and the two professions are beginning to hear this call, to feel this kinship, and somewhat bashfully to work together.
2. But moral and spiritual problems also branch out of medical problems. Behind much physical suffering is the mental torment, the doubt, fear, worry, or remorse that the stress of life has created in most of the sick and in many who call themselves well. Without recognizing and treating these ills of the mind it is impossible to control the bodily sufferings for which people consult the doctor.
The doctor must be a psychologist, an educator, a physician to the whole man- body and soul alike. But can he?
Again team-work is the need. The doctor must work with the educator, the psychologist, and the minister as well as with the philanthropist. Only in this way can he become himself an educator, a teacher, putting the truth into his patients' minds and letting it do its own work there.
3. The problem of truth speaking vs. deception and concealment in medical practice springs naturally out of the newer educational and preventive work which is being recognized to-day as the core of medical helpfulness to the public as a whole. To fool a patient is tyranny, not guidance. He must understand what is being done for him if he is to do his part properly. This means team-work of doctor and patient
