Mind Over Matter - Part 4

Whenever I think of any medical practitioner, I instinctively classify him or her as either a doctor or a healer, perhaps unfairly so! For me a healer is a person, who looks beyond the surface symptoms of an affliction. He or she cares sufficiently, as a human being to look at the whole person who has come to him for succor. Not for just a quick look at symptoms, medical reports and a hastily scribbled illegible prescription. And pronto, 'next one, please'! The healers go beyond the rigidities of law. The trust between the healer and the healed is perhaps, as important if not more, than the actual medication and procedures being administered on the patient. The true healer encourages the patient to really 'want' to be healed, and not dive into the depth of despondency. Exceptions apart, most family physicians (a dying breed!) seem to belong to this category. On the other hand, the specialists tend to look at the patient, by dissecting the patient's body and looking only at their area of specialty. The Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock lampooned this trend: When he finally succeeded in locating an ear specialist, his relief was short lived. "I treat only left ears, and you said you have pain in the right ear!'

In our family, we have had bitter experience, when medical specialty combined with the worship of Mammon, and does not look at the patient as a whole. Once, my wife was admitted in a sinking condition, to one of Bombay's elite hospitals. One night, I as layman discovered that she was getting double and in one case triple dose of the same medicine. Three different specialists, after pocketing their hefty fees, saw her each from his narrow vision and wrote out his prescription, without bothering to see what the other visiting specialists had prescribed. All her test reports and the other doctors' reports, which were on a clipboard on the headrest of the bed, did not deserve their attention. In protest, our family physician and my company's doctor decided to bring her home and she was treated at home back to normalcy. I in no way wish to paint black, any section of the medical fraternity. But it is also no secret, that there is a world wide concern about the need for the medical profession to re-look at its mission in life: healer or a commercial entrepreneur! All members of the medical fraternity will do well to reflect on the Hippocratic Oath, which all those graduating from a medical school have to take. The modern version of is:

"I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of over-treatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, that sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help."

Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University.