The Post I've Been Wanting to Write

I read in bed almost every night...not for my intelligence, rather because I have to give my mind something to do until I actually fall asleep. Otherwise, I just lay there thinking about the past day or about the upcoming day, or who-knows-what.

I picked up this book from my bookcase - a gift from the med school to all the entering first years - in the hopes that it would satisfy the criteria of a nighttime read, namely 1) be interesting enough to follow for two to ten pages before I get to sleep 2) be boring enough I will actually fall asleep instead of reading it until 5am (curse you, Harry Potter!!).

The book is On Doctoring, (3rd edition) edited by Richard Reynolds and John Stone (link to Amazon look-up). Note that used editions are very cheap. It is a collection of poems and short stories about what it actually meant and means to be a doctor. I say it like that because the stories and poems go way back to the 19th century. I was immediately struck by the book when I randomly opened it to a poem:

CARNAL KNOWLEDGE by Dannie Abse (1923- )
"...you, student, whistling those elusive bits
of Schubert when [...] you climbed the stone-murky steps
to the high and brilliant Dissecting Room
where nameless others, naked on the slabs,
reclined in disgraceful silences - twenty
amazing sculptures waiting to be vandalized.

You, corpse, I pried into your bloodless meat [...]
Your neck exposed, muscles, nerves, vessels,
a mere coloured plate in some anatomy book;
your right hand, too, dissected, never belonged,
it seemed, to somebody once shockingly alive,
never held, surely, another hand in greeting
or tenderness, never took up a pen to sign an authentic name..."

- I edited and slaughtered that poem (sorry Dr. Abse) to give a glimpse of what I was reading. It was written during WWII but I felt like had been written about my experience everyday in anatomy.

It's crazy how hard it is to remember that what you're dissecting was, just months earlier, walking around talking, thinking. I wonder sometimes whether the future cadavers really knew that I would be dissecting their anus (yes...I really did. We all did.) when they signed on. I mean one would naturally assume that being a cadaver means being explored inside and out, but the things we've done and will do in the name of science...

Anyway, to return to the topic, this is a great collections of works. I particularly latch on to the short stories - the poems are to artsy I think - about doctors making housecalls in the early 1900's, delivering babies, healing little kids' coughs, and holding people's hand as they die. They were the hardcore renaissance men, before specialization and pre-mixed medicines. Admittedly, they did about as much harm as good, but still I respect them for even doing what they could.

If you do decide to get this book, try out a couple passages I particularly like:
Introduction - cuz you're supposed to read them
The Girl with the Pimply Face - William Carlos William
The Old Gray Couple (II) - Archibald MacLeish
Carnal Knowledge - Dannie Abse
Imelda - Richard Selzer
A Day in the Life of an Internist - Richard C. Reynolds (editor snuck in one of his own)
The House Officer's Changing World - Joseph Hardison
Mistakes - David Hilfiker (docs actually make mistakes...)
Invasions - Perri Klass (med student perspective...very good)

Anyway, that's my commerical for the book I'm reading right now. It's pretty fantastic.