Page 194 - Morgan Housel - The Psychology of Money_ Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)

Congratulations, you’re still reading.
COBACOBA

It’s time to tie together a few things we’ve learned.

This chapter is a bit of a summary; a few short and actionable lessons that
can help you make better financial decisions.

First, let me tell you a story about a dentist appointment gone horribly awry.
It teaches us something vital about the dangers of giving advice about what

to do with your money.

Clarence Hughes went to the dentist in 1931. His mouth was radiating pain.
His dentist put him under crude anesthesia to ease the pain. When Clarence
awoke hours later he had 16 fewer teeth and his tonsils removed.

And then everything went wrong. Clarence died a week later from his
surgery’s complications.

His wife sued the dentist, but not because the surgery went awry. Every
surgery risked death in 1931.

Clarence, she said, never consented to the procedures in the first place, and
wouldn’t if he were asked.

The case wove through courts, but went nowhere. Consent between doctor
and patient wasn’t black and white in 1931. One court summed up the idea

that doctors require freedom to make the best medical decisions: “Without
such, we could not enjoy the advancement of science.”

For most of history the ethos of medicine was that the doctor’s job was to
fix the patient, and what the patient thought about the doctor’s treatment
plans wasn’t relevant. Dr. Jay Katz wrote about the philosophy in his book
The Silent World Between Doctor and Patient: