DOES daily exposure to patients' tragedies harden doctors, causing their empathy to atrophy? When young surgeons have to make their first incisions, which patients are they most likely to practice on? Does doctors' archetypal dark humour belie a troubling truth about the emotional demands of medical practice? What is life without memory?
These questions and others are explored in Writer, M.D. - a collection of short stories, fiction and non-fiction, penned by doctors. Without exception, these previously published works provide food for thought - from Abraham Verghese's compelling piece on the need for physicians to remember the art of the physical examination to a poignant essay on medical dissection by Pauline W. Chen.
Exemplifying the collection's best prose is psychiatrist Oliver Sacks's essay, The Lost Mariner. Writing about a patient who has Korsakoff's syndrome, a form of amnesia, Sacks says: "If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye. But if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it." The sentiment captured in these few words is particularly poignant in the light of today's increasingly pressing issues of ageing and mental health.
Containing many such insights into the human condition, Writer, M.D. will leave you with much to mull over, long after you have put it down.
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