Whatever changes there may greet your eyes,
Let not your looks proclaim the least surprise;
It’s not your business by your face to show
All that your patient does not want to know;
Nay. use your optics with considerate care,
And don’t abuse your privilege to stare.
But if your eyes may probe him overmuch,
Beware still further how you rudely touch;
Don’t clutch his carpus in your icy fist,
But warm your fingers ere you take the wrist.
If the poor victim needs must be percussed,
Don’t make an anvil of his aching bust;
(Doctors exist within a hundred miles
Who thump a thorax as they ‘d hammer piles;)
If you must listen to his doubtful chest,
Catch the essentials, and ignore the rest.
Spare him; the sufferer wants of you and art
A track to steer by, not a finished chart.
So of your questions : don’t in mercy try
To pump your patient absolutely dry;
He’s not a mollusk squirming in a dish,
You’re not Agassiz, and he ‘s not a fish.
And last, not least, in each perplexing case,
Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face;
Not always smiling, but at least serene.
When grief and anguish cloud the anxious scene.
Each look, each movement, every word and tone
Should tell your patient you are all his own;
Not the mere artist, purchased to attend,
But the warm, ready, self-forgetting friend
Whose genial visit in itself combines
The best of cordials, tonics, anodynes.
Such is the visit that from day to day
Sheds o’er my chamber its benignant ray.
I give his health, who never cared to claim
Her babbling homage from the tongue of Fame;
Unmoved by praise, he stands by all confest.
The truest, noblest, wisest, kindest, best.
By: Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes
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