ABSTRACT
Especially through urbanisation, a great number of people have lost their roots and connections; large families with their complicated and intimate interrelations are tending to disappear. In a very short time the discussion revealed—certainly not for the first time in the history of medicine—that by far the most frequently used drug in general practice was the doctor himself. It was not only the medicine in the bottle or the pills in the box that mattered, but the way the doctor gave them to his patient —in fact the whole atmosphere in which the drug was given and taken. The patient was a well-dressed and well-spoken, but very unhappy-looking, married woman of 38, who complained of aches and pains between the shoulder-blades. The effect of the apostolic function on the ways in which the doctor can administer himself to his patients is fundamental.
