Читать книгу Medicine and the Church. Being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick онлайн

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And a third aspect is one of very great importance to the question in hand—a man must have faith in himself to be of any use in the world. There may be very little on which to base it—no matter, but faith in one’s powers, in one’s mission, is essential to success. Confidence once won, the rest follows naturally; and with a strong faith in himself a man becomes a local centre for its radiation. St. Francis, St. Theresa, Ignatius Loyola, Florence Nightingale, the originator of every cult or sect or profession, has possessed this infective faith. And in the ordinary everyday work of the doctor, confidence, assurance (in the proper sense of the word) is an asset without which it is very difficult to succeed. How often does one hear the remark, ‘Oh! he does not inspire confidence,’ or the reverse! How true it is, as wise old Burton says: ‘That the patient must have a sure hope in his physician. Damascen, the Arabian, requires likewise in the physician himself that he be confident he can cure him, otherwise his physic will not be effectual, and promise withal that he will certainly help him, make him believe so at least. Galeottus gives this reason because the form of health is contained in the physician’s mind, and as Galen holds confidence and hope to be more good than physic, he cures most in whom most are confident’; and he quotes Paracelsus to the effect that Hippocrates was so fortunate in his cures not from any extraordinary skill, but because ‘the common people had a most strong conceit of his worth.’