Richard Clarke Cabot

If you are into snobbishness, Richard Clarke Cabot is a man to take a closer look at, at least if he is to be judged by his background. He was a member of the premier family of Boston, characterising itself in the well known poem:

"So this is good old Boston. The home of the bean and the cod.
Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots. And the Cabots talk only to God."

"I dwell 'neath the shades of Harvard
In the State of the Sacred Cod,
Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots
And the Cabots speak only to God"

«There are two kinds of appendicitis - acute appendicitis and appendicitis for revenue only».
Clinicopathological conference discussion. Ca 1925.

«I believe that we not only feed the public demand for useless and harmful drugs, but also go far to create that very demand. We educate our patients and their friends to believe that every or almost every symptom and disease can be benefited by a drug.
Journal of the American Medical Association.1906; 47: 982.

«Ethics and Science need to shake hands».
The meaning of Right and Wrong, introduction.

«The job of the physician as a physician and teacher is not just to tell but to convince.»
Quoted by David Seegal in Journal of Medical Education, 1964, 39: 1030.

«In my experience the educated physician who knows that only a few of his patients can be much benefited by drugs, gives out just as many prescriptions as the ignorant physician who believes all that the Pharmacopoeia and the nostrum vendor tell him. The only difference is that the educated physician gives his drugs as placebos. In my opinion, the placebo habit of giving drugs to every people with full faith in their pharmacologic action . . . . They weaken the confidence of the patient in the physician, because every placebo is a lie, and in the long run the lie is found out. We give a placebo with one meaning; the patient receives it with quite another. We mean him to suppose that the drug acts directly on his body, not through his mind by means of expectant attention. If the patient finds out what we are doing, he laughs at it or is rightly angry with us. I have seen both the laughter and the anger - at our expense. Placebo giving is quackery. It also fosters the nostrum evil."
Journal of the American Medical Association, 1906, 47: 982.

«In a smoker, probably the earliest known indication of disease is that he begins to give up Tobacco»
New England Journal of Medicine, Boston, 1931, 205: 740.

«Before you tell the "truth" to the patient, be sure you know the "truth," and that the patient wants to hear it.»
Quoted by David Segal in Journal of Chronic Diseases. 1963; 16: 443.

We thank Phil Freed for information submitted.

• A guide to the clinical examinations of the blood.
  New York, 1896; 5th edition, 1904.
• Serum diagnosis of disease. New York, 1899.
• Physical diagnosis of diseases of the chest.
  New York, 1901; 10th edition, 1930.
• Case teaching in medicine. Boston, 1906; 2nd edition, 1911.
• Ring bodies (nuclear remnants?) in anemic blood.
  Journal of Medical Research, 1903; 9: 15-19.
• Social service and the art of healing. 1909.
• Differential diagnosis.
  Philadelphia, 1911; 14th edition, 1930; translated into German.
• What men live by. Boston and New York, 1914.
• Laymen’s handbook of medicine. Boston and New York, 1916.
• Training and rewards of the physician. Philadelphia and London, 1917.
• Social work. New York, 1919.
• Adventures on the borderlands of ethics. New York, 1926.
• Facts of the heart. Philadelphia and London, 1926.
• Meaning of right and wrong. 1933.
• Christianity and sex. 1937.