The story evokes with great immediacy a number of important issues about doctoring: the predicament of having quickly to assess a medical/social situation in an unfamiliar, even hostile environment; the doctor's impressive powers of observation; his concern to do the right thing medically; the anxiety of the sick child's parents; the power that the doctor wields; the dark side of human nature which may allow such power to surface in unsavory ways and which the professional, like any rational person, has under most circumstances learned to control.

First published in 1938 in book form, the story is also available in a collection of stories and poems by Williams, concerning physician experiences, in a book compiled and introduced by Robert Coles, "The Doctor Stories" (New Directions, 1984).

For those reading Williams in a literature and medicine context, Hugh Crawford's book, Modernism, Medicine, & William Carlos Williams (annotated in this database), may be of interest. Also of interest is Brian A. Bremen's chapter (3), "Modern Medicine," in his book, William Carlos Williams and the Diagnostics of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Bremen argues that "The Use of Force" illustrates Williams's insistence on incorporating "occult" knowledge into his (empathic) "diagnostics" and contrasts it with the (self-deceptive) scientific objectivism of the neurologist-writer, S. (Silas) Weir Mitchell.