Uncommon Sense

"For whooping cough, pass the child nine times over and under a donkey from left to right." That is a prescription of the 17th Century. For the same complaint, 100 years ago, a doctor would have shaken his head, stroked his beaver, written Pil. Quin. Sulph. on a brown pad, and the mother would have thought she had a cureall. Today medicos do not always find it necessary to fortress their ignorance with esoteric metaphors; many can talk, some can even write, of their calling refreshingly, candidly, in simple words. An example is Dr. S. M. Rinehart, who has written The Commonsense of Health. **

He writes about all the familiar plagues and problems of the body--from catching cold to cancer; nor is there any trace of sickroom smirk nor of professional "strut in the way he does it. His style, in fact, is colored with a richness of literary allusion. For instance: "Do you remember Joe, the fat boy at whom Mr. Wardle was always shouting 'Joe! Damn that boy, he's asleep again'? Joe had an overpowering predilection for meat pies and mutton and roast beef. He is a humorous character, in fiction. In real life, he would be Tragedy personified, because Joe was the victim of chronic poisoning."

Later he paraphrases a celebrated classic to illustrate the sequence of disease transmission: "This is the germ of the bubonic plague.

DR. RINEHART "Do you remember Joe, the fat boy?"

"This is the rat that had the germ of the bubonic plague.

"This is the flea that bit the rat that had the germ of the bubonic plague.

"This is the man who got the flea that bit the rat that had the germ ot the bubonic plague."

In discussing that familiar patient, the t.b.m., Dr. Rinehart takes occasion to define a medical term: "One day, after a good dinner followed by one or two of his favorite cigars, he is seized with a pain. And such a pain. It is a stabbing through the chest as by a sword-thrust. It runs down his left arm and at the same time there is a tightness round the chest walls like the constriction of an iron band. He would scream if he could, but he cannot. Will he live to draw another full breath? Cold sweat is on his forehead; every muscle of his body tense; his face pallid; his pulse racing at an incredible speed. That is angina pectoris."

Dr. Rinehart, now known to the medical world as a specialist in tubercular trouble, took his degree at the Allgemeine Krankenhaus, Vienna. He began his medical practice in Pittsburgh, where, in 1896, he mar ried a trained nurse, Mary Roberts. During the War, he was in charge of the tuberculosis work at Camp Sherman, and afterwards of all the U. S. Army tuberculosis hospitals. This is his first book, but he once helped to write a play, The Avenger, which was published in 1908.

** THE COMMONSENSE OF HEALTH -- Dr. S.M. Rinehart --Doran