ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the rules which make up the bureaucratic format; but finding rules in interaction and, more especially, keeping them alive in captivity so that others may see them too, presents considerable difficulties. One objection that is commonly made to studies such as this is that although observation is undoubtedly a more direct way of studying action, the presence of the observer changes the action in a way that interviewing does not. Yet another problem which plagues both the writer and the reader of sociological work is the ambiguity of human action. By contrast there are other matters in which both doctors and patients typically share some competence and about which they can communicate with facility. That is, with the exception of some of the Puerto Rican patients in the American hospitals, all the adult participants in these medical consultations demonstrated considerable awareness of the rules of the ceremonial order of clinics.
