One of the interesting features of the story is the way that it sets up a series of polarities in the relationship between the doctor and his young patient that  creates a universal paradigm of the powerful excercising a fairly arrogant control over the weak.

What is all the more interesting is that the reader is torn between the apparent abuse of the child and the clear and present need for the doctor to get his throat culture taken so that he can proceed with diagnosis.  The reader is often seduced by the superior claim of science, but should he be?