A Last Physician

[Valin]

Barrycasselman.blogspot.com:

Saturday, July 18, 2015

 

The title is a bit of hyperbole. We don’t know exactly who the

“last” physician was, or will be, and we don’t know precisely

when the profession as such will pass away from us. It might

also seem especially strange to say “a last physician” when

all around us there is an explosion of new medicine, with new

treatments, new drugs, amazing medical devices, as well

as exponentially growing knowledge about the human body,

its genetics, overcoming diseases and a dramatic

prolonging of human lifetimes.

 

The physician has been with us since almost the beginning of

human time. Initially, there were “medicine men” in the earliest

human eras --- in the caves, in the tribes, in every form of human

society. Physicians always had a special place wherever they

were because they did something as important as anything else,

curing or alleviating illness or pain --- they “cared for” others,

often when no one else would or could.

 

In retrospect, it is amazing what early physicians could do

with herbs and potions, crude surgeries, the ancient acupuncture

and remedies of the Orient. But nothing could approach the

accelerating advances of medicine in the 18th, 19th and 20th

centuries. Diseases and pathologies, only yesterday inevitably

fatal, can now be cured or controlled. Pain can be relieved. Life

expectancy is consistently extended. The “map’ of human

genes is known. Artificial body parts now can replace many

hitherto physical failures. Transplants are commonplace.

Anything seems possible.

 

In this extraordinary abundance of medical advance and

capability, it might seem counterintuitive to speak of some

“last” physician, but I think that is exactly what is happening.

 

I will illustrate this with a very personal example. No, I have

little knowledge of medicine, but I did have a rather special

physician as a father. He was not at all a widely-known man

of medicine. He was a general practitioner in a small city

with a modest practice of patients, most of whom were

ordinary citizens from many ethnic, religious ad economic

backgrounds.

 

I said he was my father, and he was, but this is not about him

as a parent. It is about his practice of medicine.

 

 

(Snip)

 

H/T Newt Gingrich