OCR Text |
Show Diseases Known by Number. In the larger city hospitals the young doctors on the house staff and tho visiting physicians nover use the nine or ten syllable words that they employ In making a report of a cllnlo for a medical Journal or at a meeting of the County Medical society. They refer to diphtheria as a case of "dip" In some hospitals, and otbor complaints, com-plaints, such as typhoid fever or pneumonia, pneu-monia, are abbreviated In the same way, so that the physicians and nurses understand them, even If relatives who visit the patients do not. But In most of the hospitals numbers are substituted substi-tuted for name. The visiting physician physi-cian Is told that a patient Is suffering from a case ot No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3, meaning thereby smallpox, typhoid fever, or diphtheria, respectively. As such they go down on tho hospital books. |