Category: Doctors Patients and Diseases
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Healing: A word that connects or separates patients from their doctors
Fergus ShanahanCork, Ireland “He is cured by faith who is sick of fate.”James Joyce (Finnegans Wake, 482)1 In Brian Friel’s play Faith Healer, Francis “Frank” Hardy has self-doubts.2 Is his power to heal diminishing? Is it real, autosuggestion, or chance? Does it require faith? People who come to see Frank are desperate, but whether they…
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Physic
JMS PearceHull, England Amongst the General Medical Council records of 300 medical specialties hides “physician”, a word we all use with but little thought about its origins. Samuel Johnson defined physician as one who professes the art of healing.1 He also included physician as A man skilled in any profession; or Any able or learned…
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Healing beyond the sterile chamber
Brody FoglemanSpartanburg, South Carolina, United States A senior resident once shared with me: “Patients don’t heal in the hospital; they get sicker. Our goal is to stabilize, medically optimize, and discharge.” Though I was surprised by such a statement, it became truer the more patients I encountered as a medical student. A patient admitted, a…
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Endurance
Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece One of the things we learn in medicine, not from books but from the daily encounters with patients over the years, and which never stops pleasantly surprising us, is man’s endurance in all kinds of adversity and hardship, including serious health problems. No diagnostic test, biological marker or imaging modality, however…
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Physician associates and independent prescribers
JMS PearceHull, England A recent high-profile death in London has led to doctors’ concerns about medical associate professions.1,2 A thirty-year-old woman died from a pulmonary embolism after seeing a physician associate (PA). This led to the case being discussed widely in the media, on social media, and in Parliament by Barbara Keeley MP: Emily Chesterton…
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A Hispanic amulet against disease in infants
Edward TaborBethesda, Maryland, United States In my pediatric residency at a New York City hospital many years ago, I noticed that half of my Hispanic infant patients, as well as some toddlers, wore a small black and red amulet that their parents hoped would protect against disease. When I asked other residents and attending physicians…
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Synesthesia, empathy, and the “art” of medicine
Maeve PascoeCleveland, Ohio, United States “Do my name next!” people would exclaim as I tried to explain that I am not “doing” anything, I merely perceive things differently. Not many medical conditions double as parlor tricks, but the benign condition of synesthesia is unique in its ability to astonish. For much of my childhood, I…
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For debate: Presents from patients
Hugh Tunstall-PedoeDundee, Scotland It was Christmas Day in Guy’s Hospital, London. Two months into my first house-physician post, I was completing a morning round with the staff nurse on my female ward. At the far end of the open ward was a bed with closed curtains. A small face peered round them with increasing frequency…
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A brief history of ulcerative colitis
Parnita KesarSouth Carolina, United States The symptoms of ulcerative colitis have been documented since the eighteenth century. From 1745, there is evidence that Prince Charles, the Young Pretender to the English crown, had symptoms consistent with the condition we now know as ulcerative colitis. He treated these symptoms by adopting a milk-free diet.1 But the…
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Empathy or sympathy?
JMS PearceHull, England David Jeffrey’s splendid paper about emotions and empathy1 points out that Sir William Osler claimed that by excluding emotions, doctors gained a special objective insight into the patient’s suffering. But when Osler advised students that “insensibility is not only an advantage, but a positive necessity in the exercise of a calm judgment,”…