The Charactersitics of a Physician

The Charactersitics of a Physician
(Affirmative Action Version)

No greater opportunity, responsibility or obligation can fall to the lot of a human being than to become a physician. In the care of suffering she needs technical skill, scientific knowledge and human understanding. She who uses these with courage, with humility and with wisdom will provide a unique service for her fellow human and will build an enduring edifice of character within herself. The physician should ask of her destiny no more than this, she should be content with no less.

Tact, sympathy and understanding are expected of the physician, for the patient is no mere collection of symptoms, signs, disordered functions, damaged organs and disturbed emotions. She is human, fearful and hopeful, seeking relief, help and reassurance. To the physician as to the anthropologist, nothing human is strange or repulsive. The misanthropic may be a smart diagnostician of organic disease, but she can scarcely hope to succeed as a physician. The true physician has a Shakespearean breadth of interest in the wise and the foolish, the proud and the humble, the stoic hero and the whining rogue. She cares for people.

-Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine

Here goes...

First of all thanks to Nakul who quite inadvertantly introduced me to the concept of blogging.

This is just a test blog. Something to get used to the whole process.

I cant however resist quoting Voltaire.

"The duty of a physician is to amuse the patient while the disease takes its natural course".

There. Done and looking terribly pretentious. And yes, this is a blog devoted to that funny funny thing called Medicine. Among other things.