[Sidenote:  Means of obtaining inaccurate information.]

I knew a very clever physician, of large dispensary and hospital practice, who invariably began his examination of each patient with “Put your finger where you be bad.”  That man would never waste his time with collecting inaccurate information from nurse or patient.  Leading questions always collect inaccurate information.

At a recent celebrated trial, the following leading question was put successively to nine distinguished medical men.  “Can you attribute these symptoms to anything else but poison?” And out of the nine, eight answered “No!” without any qualification whatever.  It appeared, upon cross-examination:—­1.  That none of them had ever seen a case of the kind of poisoning supposed. 2.  That none of them had ever seen a case of the kind of disease to which the death, if not to poison, was attributable. 3.  That none of them were even aware of the main fact of the disease and condition to which the death was attributable.

Surely nothing stronger can be adduced to prove what use leading questions are of, and what they lead to.

I had rather not say how many instances I have known, where, owing to this system of leading questions, the patient has died, and the attendants have been actually unaware of the principal feature of the case.

[Sidenote:  As to food patient takes or does not take.]

It is useless to go through all the particulars, besides sleep, in which people have a peculiar talent for gleaning inaccurate information.  As to food, for instance, I often think that most common question, How is your appetite? can only be put because the questioner believes the questioned has really nothing the matter with him, which is very often the case.  But where there is, the remark holds good which has been made about sleep.  The same answer will often be made as regards a patient who cannot take two ounces of solid food per diem, and a patient who does not enjoy five meals a day as much as usual.

Again, the question, How is your appetite? is often put when How is your digestion? is the question meant.  No doubt the two things depend on one another.  But they are quite different.  Many a patient can eat, if you can only “tempt his appetite.”  The fault lies in your not having got him the thing that he fancies.  But many another patient does not care between grapes and turnips—­everything is equally distasteful to him.  He would try to eat anything which would do him good; but everything “makes him worse.”  The fault here generally lies in the cooking.  It is not his “appetite” which requires “tempting,” it is his digestion which requires sparing.  And good sick cookery will save the digestion half its work.

There may be four different causes, any one of which will produce the same result, viz., the patient slowly starving to death from want of nutrition: 

1.  Defect in cooking;