The Physician and His Patient
Aesop's Fables · 1 min read
A physician, visiting a patient he had been treating for a serious illness, asked cheerfully how he was feeling that morning. "I sweated a great deal last night," the patient answered. "That's an excellent sign," the physician declared confidently, and left satisfied.
On his next visit, he asked again, and the patient replied, "I had terrible chills and shivered through the whole night." Again the physician declared this an excellent sign of the illness breaking, and left just as confidently as before.
On his third visit, he asked once more, and the patient, growing increasingly weak, replied, "I've broken out in a severe rash all over my body." Once again, the physician pronounced this an excellent sign and departed cheerfully. Soon after, a relative visited the ailing man and asked how he was truly doing. "I am dying of a good many excellent signs," the patient replied wearily, understanding at last that a physician determined to see improvement everywhere was of no real use to a patient who needed an honest diagnosis instead.
Moral of the story
Relentless, unexamined optimism is not the same as real diagnosis — sometimes the honest, harder truth is what's actually needed.