Of feelings and manners

Patients and physicians may be at odds these days because of physicians' bad manners, which lead to patients' hurt feelings. I use cases to demonstrate that sick people, no matter how intelligent or powerful, feel helpless and awed, and are extremely sensitive to lapses in physicians' manners. Good manners can help by being an automatic brake. Good manners are society's safeguard against the incoherent jumble of human feelings to which we are all subject. Translating such feelings into something more presentable, is what manners are about.