Why doctors' reception rooms
should always so strongly combine the attractiveness of a popular
lunch-room on a rainy day with the quiet domestic atmosphere of a county
jail, I have never been able to find out, unless the object is to reduce
the patient to such a horrible state of depression that the mere summons
to enter the doctor's presence makes one feel very much better already.
There are times when to be told that one has pneumonia or an incipient
case of tuberculosis must be a relief after an hour spent in one of
those dreadful ante-chambers.
The literature in a physician's waiting-room is not exhilarating.
Usually, there is an extensive collection of periodicals four months old
and over. From this I gather that physicians' wives and daughters are
persistent but somewhat deliberate readers of current literature. The
sense of age about the magazines on a doctor's table is heightened by
the absence of the front and back covers. The only way of ascertaining
the date of publication is to hunt for the table of contents. That,
however, is a task which few able-bodied men in the prime of life are
equal to, not to say a roomful of sick people, nervous with
anticipation.
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