The patient was a middle-aged man complaining of progressive weakness and fever. “I’m getting scared, Doc,” he said. “I’ve lost 20 pounds in the last two months, and last night I coughed up some blood.”
“Bright red blood?” the doctor asked.
“Yes. Is that bad?”
“We’ll see. Let’s have a look at a film.”
There was no question of the diagnosis as Dr. Olie studied the wet X ray. Advanced tuberculosis is hard to miss on a chest film. But when he began to examine the patient’s chest, the characteristic sounds of the infection which had been present at first ceased abruptly. The fever and cough the nurse had noted on his chart suddenly were gone, and the man seemed to be breathing more deeply and freely.
“That’s funny,” the man said. “I’d have sworn I felt lousy when I came in here, and now I’m feeling great. In fact, I feel like going out and having a steak.”
Dr. Olie’s hand was shaking as he put down the stethoscope. “Let me see another chest film first,” he said. “And don’t worry about the cost—this one’s on the house.”
The second film, taken 20 minutes after the first, revealed nothing but normal, healthy-looking chest.
After the office closed that night, Dr. Olie sat for a long time staring at the two films side by side on his view box. There was no way it could have happened—no way at all —but there it was. This he could not ignore—and now that the dam had broken, he thought back to the succession of curious coincidences that had been tripping over each other in the past few weeks. Individually, just coincidences. Taken together, a pattern. The touch of his hand, a few words, and the patient was cured. Minor things perhaps could be dismissed as “normal remissions”—but not a case like this one. And not the case of Mary Castle.
He knew there had to be an answer, but no answer made sense. This was not scientific medicine that he was dealing with. This was miracle-working. And then he thought of the day he had leafed through Mary Castle’s chart so hopelessly, grasping for straws in desperation. If only there could, be some magic in my fingers—
Dr. Olie shivered as a hint of panic rose in his mind.
There is a time-honored tradition that the doctor may bury his mistakes without recrimination, but must never advertise his successes.
In Dr. Stephen Olie’s case, advertisement was hardly necessary. Little by little, word of the doctor’s incredible feats of healing began to spread, first through the town and then farther afield. At first the stories were received with skepticism. Everyone knew that doctors could not cure by magic—but it was hard to argue with a living, breathing neighbor who swore he had been cured by just such curious handiwork. One by one the most skeptical themselves began slinking quietly to Dr. Olie’s office and coming back cured of everything from carbuncles to cancer. Soon the office nurse was having trouble scheduling appointments; the doctor’s tiny waiting room was crowded to overflowing as the lame, the halt and the blind trouped in and the doctor’s fingertips continued their miracles. The office opened a little earlier each morning and closed a little later. The doctor began hurrying from examining room to examining room, racing faster and faster to keep up with the deluge of patients.
Home calls went by the board. There simply were not hours enough in the day to make them, and the doctor’s hospital admissions dropped sharply as fewer and fewer of his patients seemed to require hospitalization. Soon Dr. Olie began hearing remarks and complaints from his once-friendly medical colleagues as the traffic jams outside his office increased in frequency.
In the middle of an especially busy day, three grim-faced gentlemen appeared in his office and were hurried into his consultation room in spite of the standing-room-only crowd outside. “They’re from the County Medical Society,” his nurse whispered as they stalked up the hall. “Some kind of a delegation. They insisted upon seeing you at once.”
The leader of the delegation was a highly successful society surgeon named Bronson. He did not waste time with pleasantries. “Doctor, there have been a number of very strange reports about you at the Society recently.”
Dr. Olie sighed and sank wearily back in his swivel chair. “You mean patients have been complaining?”
Dr. Bronson looked momentarily embarrassed. “Not patients, exactly,” he said. “But some of your colleagues have become concerned about certain—ah—questionable practices going on here. You realize that it is the obligation of the Medical Society to uphold the ethics of the profession—”
“You mean that it’s unethical for me to cure my patients?” Dr. Olie asked quietly.
Dr. Bronson glanced uneasily at his colleagues. “No one would say that, of course,” he said quickly. “But we have to question a man who seems to cure so many so quickly.”
Dr. Olie looked relieved. “I see! It’s ethical to cure them, but unethical to cure them quickly, eh? I should drag it out a bit more?”
The surgeon flushed angrily. “Doctor, you know quite well what I’m trying to say. No one is questioning the fact of your—ah—success in practice, if it is a fact. It’s your methods that are under scrutiny.”
“I’m simply practicing medicine the best way I know how,” Dr. Olie replied.
“You mean by faith healing?”
Dr. Olie pulled X rays from his file. “Would you consider this faith healing?” he asked quietly.
“I would consider this outright fraud!” Dr. Bronson sputtered. “What’s going on in this office? What have you been doing? The Society insists on an answer.”
“Then tell them that I’ve been curing impossible cases. And that I haven’t the faintest idea how.”
Dr. Bronson shook his head angrily. “Doctor, we are representing the Medical Society officially. There have always been renegades in medicine who have preyed upon helpless neurotics. It is our duty to protect the public against charlatans—”
“But there’s nothing neurotic about cancer of the lung.” Dr. Olie said. “Nor osteomyelitis. Nor septicemia.”
“Then if you have some miraculous drug, it’s your ethical duty to study it scientifically, document its actions, run ‘double blind’ studies to evaluate it—”
“And, of course, share it with my colleagues.” Dr. Olie rose abruptly. “I’m sorry, Doctor. There is no miracle drug. I think you are wasting your time, and I’m quite certain that you’re wasting mine. Now, if you will excuse me, I have patients to see.”
“Then this is your final word?” Dr. Bronson said ominously, rising with his delegation.
“There’s nothing more I can say.”
“Very well.” The surgeon drew himself up. “You realize that the Society will not be satisfied with my report. No doubt you will be hearing further.”
Dr. Olie did hear further—but not quite in the manner he expected. The Medical Society delegation had hardly left when the phone was ringing with an emergency call for Dr. Bronson. “Yes, he was here—but he’s gone now. I don’t know where you could reach him.”
The voice on the wire was frantic. “But I have to reach him. When he saw my husband this morning, everything seemed fine, but now John can hardly breathe. It’s a cancer case, Doctor. If you can’t reach Dr. Bronson, could you possibly come yourself?”
Dr. Olie hurried, and it was well that he did. The patient’s name was John Stevenson, and he was in great pain, obviously in the terminal stages of a wasting disease. He was choking for breath, his heart rate frantic and irregular. A brief history clarified the picture: an unsuccessful operation to arrest a carcinoma of the lung, followed by supportive care as the tumor spread and fluid filled the chest cavity. Dr. Bronson’s treatment had been expert, meticulous and thoroughly scientific.