My friend Leopold is also a physician, a relative of Otto. Since the two
practise the same specialty, fate has made them competitors, who are
continually being compared with each other. Both of them assisted me for
years, while I was still directing a public dispensary for nervous
children. Scenes like the one reproduced in the dream have often taken
place there. While I was debating with Otto about the diagnosis of a
case, Leopold had examined the child anew and had made an unexpected
contribution towards the decision. For there was a difference of
character between the two similar to that between Inspector Brassig and
his friend Charles. The one was distinguished for his brightness, the
other was slow, thoughtful, but thorough. If I contrast Otto and the
careful Leopold in the dream, I do it, apparently, in order to extol
Leopold. It is a comparison similar to the one above between the
disobedient patient Irma and her friend who is thought to be more
sensible. I now become aware of one of the tracks along which the
thought association of the dream progresses; from the sick child to the
children’s asylum. The dulness to the left, below, recalls a certain
case corresponding to it, in every detail in which Leopold astonished me
by his thoroughness. Besides this, I have a notion of something like a
metastatic affection, but it might rather be a reference to the lady
patient whom I should like to have instead of Irma. For this lady, as
far as I can gather, resembles a woman suffering from tuberculosis.
_An infiltrated portion of skin on the left shoulder._
I see at once that this is my own rheumatism of the shoulder, which I
always feel when I have remained awake until late at night. The turn of
phrase in the dream also sounds ambiguous; something which I feel ... in
spite of the dress. “Feel on my own body” is intended. Moreover, I am
struck with the unusual sound of the term “infiltrated portion of skin.”
“An infiltration behind on the upper left” is what we are accustomed to;
this would refer to the lung, and thus again to tuberculosis patients.
_In spite of the dress._
This, to be sure, is only an interpolation. We, of course, examine the
children in the clinic undressed; it is some sort of contradiction to
the manner in which grown-up female patients must be examined. The story
used to be told of a prominent clinician that he always examined his
patients physically only through the clothes. The rest is obscure to me;
I have, frankly, no inclination to follow the matter further.
_Dr. M. says: “It is an infection, but it does not matter. Dysentery
will develop, and the poison will he excreted._”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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