CHAPTER XVI.

INFLUENCE OF HOPE IN THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE, 344

Physician’s employment a cheerful one. Contrary opinion quite prevalent, but erroneous. Cases in which he can neither cure nor palliate few. Prevailing cast of physician’s mind, therefore, hopeful. Hope should always be based on intelligent grounds. Hope in the different stages of a case. Seldom should all hope be given up—even in apparently desperate cases recovery sometimes occurs. Interesting case. Hope a cordial—as necessary as the cordial draught, and as improper to withhold it. Giving false assurances wrong. Often done by quacks and quackish physicians. Views and feelings of patients in regard to prospect of death often misunderstood. Extinction of all hope of recovery not commonly desirable in cases certain to be fatal. This extinction of hope not essential to perfect resignation. Influence of collateral circumstances upon the manner in which death is met. Occasional pauses in the onward progress of fatal chronic disease. Duty of the physician in regard to the hope awakened at such times. Supposed salutary moral influence of the certain expectation of death. Tendency to hope in consumptive patients. Curability of consumption.