The Dangerous Doctors

Doctors seldom mention the fact that an illness can be iatrogenic, i.e., caused by the doctor.* Yet many forms of sickness are created or made worse by the doctor's own emotional shortcomings. So says Psychiatrist Franklin Gessford Ebaugh of Denver in the Journal of the Michigan State Medical Society.

Usually, says Dr. Ebaugh, expanding earlier reports by a colleague, Dr. Frank R. Drake (TIME, March 15, 1948), such illnesses result from the doctor's failure to recognize or treat the emotional factors in the case. The doctor may be too busy looking for possible physical and mechanical causes: "Not infrequently some innocent anomaly ... is falsely honored and burned at the diagnostic stake. Lo, the tipped uterus, the flat foot, the infected tooth, the evil adhesion!"

One-third of all the people who go to doctors suffer primarily from emotional disorders, says Dr. Ebaugh. Often a doctor can find nothing organically wrong with the patient, but is afraid that another physician may. So he hedges his report to the patient, leaving him confused and worried. Dr. Ebaugh calls this the "mug-wumping technique of trying to be right in any event."

Dr. Ebaugh warns physicians against using psychiatric jargon or other technical lingo on patients: "Hiding your own ignorance behind the mask of scientific verbiage is more frequently depressive rather than impressive to the patient . . ." The patient should have his illness straightforwardly explained. Psychiatrist Ebaugh is particularly scornful of:

The Doodler. One species of physician is often unaware of the effect that his anxiety may have upon the patient: "If you are anxiously beating out an SOS with your fingers on the desk, or doodling with agitation while verbally reassuring a hypertensive patient . . . the patient will understand what you are doing and reject what you are saying."

The Doubter. Sometimes the doctor's anxiety is vented in hostility. When he says ". . . Damn neurotic--nothing wrong with him," Dr. Ebaugh believes that it can be translated as: "This patient is emotionally disturbed . . . I am doubtful of my own capabilities. By denying that the patient is sick, and depreciating him as being not worthwhile, I feel less threatened."

The Omnipotent. Sometimes, says Psychiatrist Ebaugh, a doctor has so much self-love that he must "preserve the illusion of omnipotence . . . the doctor who plays God." His patients, if they do not get better or do exactly what he says, "must bear the brunt of a revengeful Jehovah and assume full guilt for their failure to recover."

* From the Greek: iatros (physician) and gen-(producing).

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