To indulge or not to indulge, to relent or not to relent for patients. Consolation facets as a E. S. Botkin’s edifice legacy

Eugene Botkin’s reading “Should We Indulge Patients?”, composed in 1903, has not lost its significance nowadays, as the clinical process should be associated not only with surgical intervention or therapeutic correction of the physiological body functions, but also with the impact on the human soul.

The article describes what it means “to pamper the sick” in the modern world. We consider clinical examples that show how the attending physician looking deep into  the patient’s situation can improve his  patient’s mood and thereby, contribute to the acceleration of the clinical recovery.