The art of consultation? Chaos Park? I understand your objections, Sven. Please, let me explain.
Soccer is a complicated model for the production game. There are simpler models such as ping-pong and tennis. Two players provide a doubles team.
The common kind of consultation is akin to a doubles team. Patient and doctor co-operate for adjustment to some problem. Within certain limits, a good patient may compensate for a bad doctor, and vice versa.
Physician and patient share the responsibility for the result of the consultation.
The patient has to provide the doctor with correct and intelligible information. The pitfalls of the patient are repression, denial, oblivion. When a pass is needed, he is short of football.
Doctor? In my military career as a C3 man, I was the secretary of the doctor in Umeå 1957. About 30 medical profiles performed under my supervision that year.
Some physicians were skilled in listening to the patient, others in physical examination.
In fact, the doctors behaved much like soccer players, each training his favorite virtue. The runner drilled swiftness, the header ankle springiness, the scorer shooting.
Modern consultation has emphasized the dialogue, the listening, the understanding, the psychoscopy.
Sven, I feel that structured observation is an essential part of the consultation. A trained clinician may perform a psychoscopy in 5-10 minutes and an extensive physical examination from top to toe in two minutes.
Is it impossible to lie in body language? Have you never been tricked in a football field? And what do actors do on the stage?
The vibration note by Ekstedt (see "Debate") made me think that gait, feet, may express state of mood and health more truly than other limbs.
"Tucking his cloak into his belt, Elijah ran ahead of Ahab all the way to Jezreel."
"The son of Torsten is recognized by countenance and gait."
"We are Laps, as shown by walk;
we are drunk, as shown by talk."
During three years, I watched the atactic gait of a B12-deficient patient improve to springy walk. But the patient had pain during recovery, much like the pain of frozen fingers re-warmed.
Sven, I respect your opinion that the consultation is a psychoscopy. But I do not share your opinion.
Furthermore, I deem that a medical student is necessary to make a consultation complete. What would Sherlock Holmes be without Watson?
Contrast literature
The Holy Bible. New International Version (1984).
Veblen T. The theory of the leisure class (1899).
Berne E. Games people play (1964)
Harris T. I´m OK, you´re OK (1969)
Popper K. Conjectures and refutations . The growth of scientific knowledge. Ed 4 (1972).
Morris, Goscinny. La guérison des Daltons. Dargaud, Paris (1975).
Updated juli 12, 2000