Elwyn Brooks White. 1939. A study of the clinical "we". In Quo Vadimus? or The Case for the Bicycle. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, pp.136-138.
A recent article on grammar, which I read in a magazine, has led me to the preparation of a paper on the clinical "we." The clinical "we" is a bedside form in use among practical nurses, who find, in the sound of the plural, a little of the faded romance which still attaches to life. It is also used universally by baby nurses, who think of themselves in groups of four.
Unlike the editorial "we," which is a literary device used to protect writers from the fumes of their own work, the clinical "we" is simply a spoken form, and is rarely written. A baby nurse employs the "we" in the belief that no single person could have as much special knowledge as she has, and that therefore when she speaks it must be three other people too. Thus, when I once asked a baby nurse if she wouldn't please put a hat on my son before she took him out in a sandstorm which happened to be raging at the moment, her reply was: "We never put hats on him after June first." "You and who else don't?" I remember answering. It was my first clash with the clinical "we."
Since then I have studied it, not only in baby nurses but in dentists' assistants, ward witches, and the developers of X-ray plates. It is common to all of them, but hospital nurses use it to denote the patient, not the nurse. I know of one hospital case in which the sudden use of the clinical "we," in the presence of an elderly gentleman convalescing from an operation, threw him into a paroxysm which proved a serious setback to his recovery. It was early in the morning, and a pretty little Southern nurse, coming into his room, sang out: "We didn't change our pajamas this morning, did we?"
"No, let's do it right now!" replied the aged patient somewhat bitterly. The wry joke so excited him that he had to be given a sedative, and later a talking to.
It is probably apparent from the above examples that the clinical "we" can seldom be taken lying down, but almost always provokes a rejoinder. In hospitals the "we" is merely an unattractive figure of speech in a world of strange and unattractive details, but in the home it is intolerable. To live under the same roof with a user of the "we" is a fairly good test of a man's character. During the winter of 1931 I employed twenty-two baby nurses, one after another, before I found one who could make a sentence beginning with the word "I." I used to call them "we-uns." Every morning I would go upstairs to the nursery. "Morning, Nurse," I would say, "how you feeling?"
"We are just fine, sir," would be the courteous but silly reply.
"Canst make a sentence beginning with the word 'I'?" I would ask.
"We never make sentences that-a-way, sir," she would blush. So I would fire her and get another. Finally a little Irish girl named McGheogheoghan (pronounced McVeigh) came along, and one morning I went up and asked her how she was feeling.
"I feel terrible," she answered.
That nurse is still with us, and grows, I am happy to say, more singular every day.
