A prescriber should avoid the habit of telling the patient what to get. The oldest friendship may not stand the strain. Even a physician often does not like to prescribe for himself, and when he consults a confrere prefers that he write a prescription.

A patient seldom consults a physician unless he, at least, imagines himself sick, and however slight his ailments he wants to be shown full consideration. If he is given medicine at all he appreciates his ailment being accorded the dignity of having a prescription written for it. Also nothing so encourages self-medication as telling the patient what to get, nothing is so apt to result in mistakes, and nothing so disgusts the doctor's friend and should-be supporter-the druggist.

An example will illustrate: A family sent for a physician to treat a child with earache. The physician, after a careful examination, told them to get an ounce of glycerin, put twenty drops of carbolic acid in it, shake it up and put two or three drops in the ear affected. It seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back, for the family, who had employed him for years, sent for another physician who gave them the following prescription and retained the practice:

For Mary Jones (5 years).

M.

Sig

Use two (2) drops in ear as directed.

One doctor had lost a family's practice and another gained one, not through the latter's superior medical ability, but through his knowledge of human nature and the demands of his position.

The principle is not to be carried to extremes. For example: in prescribing a calomel purge to be followed next day by a saline, the prescriber can well write his prescription for the calomel, etc., and in his written instructions left with the patient instruct as to a dose of Epsom salt being taken the following morning.

It should always be remembered that it is hard to overestimate the psychic factor in the treatment of disease, and that while the prescription is a very commonplace scrap of paper to the prescriber, it is, to the patient, the ultimate expression of an oracle and is that which he feels is to stand between him and dread disease or even the Grim Reaper.