Beyond Feelings - Vincent Ruggiero [64]
A great deal can be told even from the simple exchange of greetings by two people passing each other. Merely the tone in which the greeting is expressed can suggest whether the people like and respect each other and whether they consider each other equals. None of these reactions, however subtle, are missed by observant people. And, as may be obvious, aside from the benefits to their thinking, careful attention is a great aid in making people more sensitive to and thoughtful of others.
A student in a writing class raises his hand and asks the teacher if he can borrow a pen. (The class is in its ninth week and the in-class writing assignment was announced previously.) The instructor gives him a long search look, slowly reaches into her pocket and extracts a pen, and walks in a labored step to the student's desk and hands it to him. No words have been spoken. No obvious gestures have signaled the instructor's displeasure. But if the student is observant, he will have seen the displeasure in the look and the resigned, "what's the use" gait.
Good detectives are observant. They know that one small, easily overlooked clue can mean the difference between a solved and an unsolved case. Similarly, every good trial lawyer must be a studious observer of people. The nervous glance of a witness when a certain aspect of the case is mentioned can suggest the most productive line of questioning. Likewise, we can conduct our critical thinking more effectively if we observe other people's behavior carefully.
OBSERVATION IN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
We own today's knowledge of the causes and treatments of heart attack in part to the careful observation of one doctor. Dr. James B. Herrick was the first physician ever to diagnose a heart attack in a living patient. He did so without benefit of blood tests or electrocardiograms. In doing so, he opened the door to the modern era in heart care. Until that time heart attacks were not recognized as a disease. The symptoms that even lay people have learned to recognize today were until Herrick's discovery regarded as "acute indigestion." Herrick established that most heart attacks are due to a clot in a coronary artery and that such an attack need not be fatal. (Interestingly, Herrick had earlier discovered the disease known as sickle-cell anemia.)1
Another well-known and extremely fortuitous occasion when the power of observation paid handsome dividends for humanity took place in 1929. Sir Alexander Fleming accidentally contaminated a staphylococcus culture with a mold. He noticed that the staph colonies began to undergo dissolution. Recognizing the great value of whatever substance in the mold had caused the dissolution, Fleming turned his attention to the mold. Eventually he isolated the substance that ahs since saved countless millions of lives – penicillin. A few years earlier, in 1922, Fleming had made another dramatic discovery. He had a cold and a runny nose. As he was working with a glass pate on which bacteria were growing, a drop from his nose fell onto the plate. In a short time he noticed that the drop had destroyed some of the bacteria. Thus he discovered a substance called lysozyme, a protein and enzyme also found in saliva and tears. Now some researches believe that lysozyme may play a part in controlling cancer.2
The French Nobel prize-winning molecular biologist Jacques Monod owes his discovery that manic depression is genetically linked