Part 82

“It holds the physician liable for any professional confidence violated.” Dr. Strong rose and paced up and down the room, talking with repressed energy. “Therein it follows medical ethics in its most conservative and baneful phase. The code of medical conduct provides that a physician is bound to keep secret all the private affairs of a patient, learned in the course of practice. One body, the American Institute of Homoeopathy, has wisely amended its code to except those cases where ‘harm to others may result.’ That amendment was passed with particular reference to venereal disease.”

“What about contagious disease?” asked Mr. Clyde. “Doesn’t the law require the physician to report diphtheria, for instance, and thus violate the patient’s confidence?”

“Certainly it does. All schools recognize that principle of protection to the public. Yet, in the case of syphilis or gonorrhoea, when the harm to the public health is far greater than from any ‘reportable’ disease except tuberculosis, the physician must hold his peace, though he sees his patient pass out of his hands bearing fire and sword and poison to future generations. There’s the Ban of Silence in its most diabolical form!”

Mr. Clyde regarded his household physician keenly. “I’ve never before seen you so stirred,” he observed.

“I’ve reason to be stirred.” The Health Master whirled suddenly upon his friend and employer. “Clyde, you’ve never questioned me as to my past.”

“No.”

“Have you never wanted it cleared up?”

“No.”

“You’ve always been willing to take me on trust?”

“Yes.”

“And I appreciate it. But now I’m going to tell you how I happened to come to you, a broken and ruined man.”

“Think it over, Strong,” advised Mr. Clyde. “Don’t speak now. Not that it would make any difference to me. I know you. If you were to tell me that you had committed homicide, I’d believe that it was a necessary and justifiable homicide.”

“Suicide, rather,” returned the other with a mirthless laugh; “professional suicide. I’ll speak now, if you don’t object.”

“Go ahead, then, if it will ease your mind.”

“I’m a lawbreaker, Clyde. I did, years ago, what you thought Emery should have done. I deliberately violated the profession’s Ban of Silence. The man was my patient, in the city where I had built up a good high-class practice. He had contracted gonorrhoea and I had treated him for a year. The infection seemed to be rooted out. But I knew the danger, and when he told me that he was engaged to be married, to a girl of my own set and a valued friend, I was horror-stricken. I pleaded, argued, and finally threatened. It was no use. He was the spoiled child of a wealthy family, impatient of any thwarting. One day the suspicions of the girl’s mother were aroused. She came to me in deep distress. I told her the truth. The engagement was broken. The man did not bring suit against me, but his family used their financial and social power to persecute and finally drive me out of the city, a nervous wreck. That’s my history.”

“You could have protected yourself by telling the true facts,” suggested Clyde. .

“Yes: but that would have been an unforgivable breach of confidence. The public had no right to the facts. The girl’s family had.”

“Then they should have come to your rescue with the truth.”

“I bound them to secrecy.”

Slowly Mr. Clyde rose, walked over, picked up the paper with the staring headlines, folded it, laid it on the table, and, in passing the physician, set a hand, as if by chance, upon his shoulder. From so undemonstrative a man the action meant much.

“So,” he said with affectionate lightness, “my Chinese physician had been fighting dragons before he ever came to us; worse monsters than he’s been called upon to face, since. That was a splendid defeat, Strong.”

“A bitter one,” said the Health Master; “and by the same old Monster, in another manifestation that we’ve been fighting here. We’ve downed him now and again, you and I, Clyde. But he’s never killed: only scotched. He’s the universal ally of every ill that man hands on to man, and we’ve only to recognize him under the thousand and one different forms he assumes to call him out to battle under his real name.”

“And that is?” inquired Clyde.

“Ignorance,” said the Health Master.

THE END