Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1911 — The ONLOOKER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The ONLOOKER

By WILBUR D. NESBIT

Dr Hamlet

“Surgeons are now giving more study to ‘borderland cases’ —those in which the question is whether or not an operation is necessary.”

To cut, or not to cut, that is the question; Whether ’tis better in the mind to argue It it be or be not appendicitis, Or to administer the anaesthetic And have an operation?—To cut, —to carvs No mere; or, by carving say we end Lumbago and the thousand natural ills That flesh is heir to. Is an operation. Devoutly to be wished. To cut—to dose;—

To dose?—Perchance to cure! Ay, there ’» the rub! For with that cure of ills what ills may come When folk have shuffled from our office door Must give us pause : there’s-the respect That comes of bulletins sent hourly forth. For who would miss the calcium light of fame. The advertisement of the great man’s surgeon? The patients in the office, waiting turns. The folk who have such lordly stomach aches That they would have their social status shown By the bare scalpel! Who would powders give When people yearn to go beneath the knife? And, O, the jdy of something after that!— Borne undiscovered symptom, of whose pain The patient still may talk—and foot the bill. And who would rather bear the ills he has Than fly to others that he knows not of? Thus aching doth make patients of them all Until they form the stubborn' resolution To lie upon the table and resemble The frontispiece of Ayer’s almanac. With this regard, their faces turn away. They hate the name of physic. Soft you, now. The operation! ffurse, in thy fever charts Be all my words remembered.