orded.

_Unreliability of "Home-Made Diagnoses"_

In the analyses of these cases I am guided by my experience with
the diagnoses naively given by patients entering my office for
treatment--diagnoses based either upon their own unguided observation
or upon what they suppose their own physician to have said to them.
In such instances there is no possible motive for deception or for
exaggeration; the patient is saying exactly what he believes; and
yet, I have rarely found his statement to be even approximately
correct. For example, when a patient comes to me with the statement
that he has "kidney and bladder trouble," I generally find both
the kidneys and the bladder sound. The patient has pain in his back
in the region where he supposes his kidneys to be; he interprets
his symptoms in the light of what he has read in the newspaper
advertisements and what he has been told by his kind friends, and
arrives at what is (to his mind) a perfectly solid conclusion. He
has no doubts of the diagnosis, states it as a fact, and asks only
for treatment.

So it is with patients coming for "spinal trouble," "hardening of the
spine," "inflammation of the spine," or "spinal meningitis." They
almost always turn out, on careful examination, to be suffering from
some form of nervous prostration. In the interpretation of their
sufferings and in the names which they attach to them they have been
guided quite innocently by hearsay.

Similarly when patients come to me for what they call "heart trouble"
and turn out on examination to be suffering from pain in the left side
of the chest without any heart trouble at all, I accuse them of no
deception but only of incapacity for the accurate appreciation of the
value of evidence.

Certain other statements recur very often in the histories given in
all good faith by patients, whether in the doctor's office or in a
Christian Science experience meeting. I will quote some of these:

"I have had a great many doctors, and each has made a different
diagnosis."

"I am suffering from a complication of diseases, Bright's disease,
liver and lung complaint, and other ailments too numerous to
mention."

"I have had a great many operations performed on me."

Experience shows us that when a person has had many doctors, many
diagnoses, many "diseases," or many operations, he usually turns out
to be suffering from nervous prostration or some other form of
functional nervous trouble. For these troubles ar