W31 1893 AN ADVANCE SUBSCRIBER TO THE EDITOR HE DOCTOR'S WINDOW"! HAIL THE DAY YOU NAMED YOUR BOOK SO QUEER! THE DOCTORS, ONE AND ALL, WILL SAY "You've 'READ YOUR TITLE CLEAR'." COULD I BUT READ MY TITLE CLEAR TO MANSIONS" ALL MY OWN, MY "DOCTOR'S WINDOW" WOULD APPEAR THE MARVEL OF THE TOWN. YES, IT SHOULD GLOW WITH FLOWERS RARE, THE BRIGHTEST GEMS SHOULD SPARKLE THERE, A "WINDOW' WHERE THE LIGHT WOULD SHINE ON PLEASURES PURE AND BRIGHT; AND SUCH IS YOURS TO GIVE TODAY, "THE DOCTOR'S WINDOW" TRUE, THAT IN DECEMBER VOICES MAY WITH POEMS OLD AND NEW. -DR. EDWARD D. FREEMAN. O Introduction LDEST and most honorable of Guilds, the Doctors have written much in all ages about the Science and Art of Medicine. A great building scarce suffices to hold their writings. In turn the Doctors themselves have been much written about, and here are gathered a well chosen collection of these pieces. They have been chosen not at random but so as to present, as to one who looks through a window at the stream of life hurrying along some great thoroughfare, all its phases and aspects. Through the ages from the early dawn of human existence the Medicine Man has pursued his strange yet sacred calling. Possessed of mysterious knowledge which sets them apart, dealing ever with the tremendous and baffling problems of life and death, looked to by all when suffering and danger impend, worshiped as divine and hailed as deliverers when the issue is good, or derided and punished for their failures, the doctors have always enjoyed strange experiences. The sufferer cannot promise too much in the hope of relief, but the danger past and the pain relieved how odious when the welcome, thrice welcome Healer is regarded as the importunate creditor whose demand seems monstrous in the light of half forgotten suffering. Nor have the Doctors failed to show the inconsistencies and the frailties of their human nature, ever struggling with burdens too heavy to be borne, and with problems too hard to be solved. The triumph and the defeat, the glory of heroic devotion and selfsacrifice, and the meanness of avarice and ambition, have been seen and well portrayed. Through it all the belief of the people in the healing art has remained true; through it all the aim of the Doctors has remained noble; and the larger light of knowledge of these later days is defining clearly the splendid services rendered to humanity by medicine. It is no longer merely the personal relation of doctor to patient, and the personal service: there is coming now the infinitely broader relation of sympathy and confidence between the entire community and the whole medical profession, engaged in a common work of discovering and removing the causes of Disease. Hygiene and preventive medicine are the fields wherein the greatest triumphs of the future, as of the past, are to be achieved. But there will always remain the close and individual relation of Doctor and patient which is so well depicted in all its phases in the verses of this collection. We turn from the larger outlook of the struggle which science wages against disease, to the more narrow sphere wherein every home of the land the Doctor wages his never ending battle with the individual cases of weakness, of suffering, or of injury. In the poetry and in the prose of life, in its happiest drama and its wildest tragedies he has ever his important part to bear. It is good to find that the rôle assigned him in the unfolding scroll of Time is one of ever growing honor and importance. -WILLIAM PEPPER, M. D. |