To Geoffrey Evans, my teacher

“People come to us for help. They come for health and strength . . . There is an emotional or nervous aspect to all disease. We doctors must be able to treat this. The basic weaknesses of human nature are fear, self-pity and self-indulgence. Tennyson wrote in ‘Denone’:

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,

These three alone lead life to sovereign power

As medical students you can already contribute to your patients’ recovery on this super-sensuous level. You will contribute to their self-reverence by treating them with respect and understanding, and by giving them their due in admiration for such fortitude (for instance) as they show in suffering. You will be able to give them self-knowledge by giving them such simple information on physiological principles as is well within your knowledge and directly applicable to their sensations. You can give them self-control simply by having yourselves under perfect control, control so perfect that you are not (for instance) irritated by an irritating remark. If a man has no money, he cannot give it away. It is the same with these super-sensuous things . . .”

(From a leaflet for students written by Geoffrey Evans in the nineteen-thirties)