Doctors@ Art

 The profession of doctors is indeed fantastic. Sure the idealists in this profession are not very many. Would not that be the fate of most professions though? In fact, the fig leaves in every vocation would be the truly minimalistic minority of some two per cent who are genuinely committed, and consider the profession an extension of their very selves as it is their avocation.

May be, because patients' lives are directly involved in this noble profession, the corruption of all sorts in this profession is an eyesore. Literature, especially pop literature, captures quite well what ails the medical profession so badly that it is necessary to say "doctor, heal thyself".

One of the best examples of  medical imagery is in Keats' poetry. Keats, who had won a scholarship to study medicine, would have made a wonderful doctor as well as a greater poet had he lived longer. He never got the chance though as he died of consumption at a very early age. His poems, and letters, have  precise depiction of the symptoms a patient suffers though!

I do not mind stating it openly that I adore the medical fiction, even though academics may dismiss it as pop stuff. In fact, i am a half (baked) doctor as much due to Aai's illness as due to my quite obvious obsession with the novels by Robin Cook. Yes, i am quite a fan of Robin Cook's ouevre. 

As a sincere student of  serious literature, I do understand the melodrama, the repetitive plot patterns, the quite simplistic black-n-white characterisation therein. Yet the ethical issues, involved in medicine, as often it is a marriage of convenience with technology, are fascinatingly presented in Robin Cook's fiction.Moreover, the medical world in his novels is unmistakably a spitting (in all senses of the term) image of the reality. 

Yet another novel that I adore, as it deals with the medical world, is "The Citadel" by A.J. Cronin, yet again a practising doctor. Cronin, too, knew from close quarters the dis-ease in the medical fraternity, the moral dilemmas, the ethical choices involved in running/ruining the profession and the "re-search" possibilities therein .

Well, i can write papers on either or both the authors. The blog readers may want me to take 'the' chill pill though. So i better stop now. Some more some other time, and, yes, much more on the depiction of the profession in films, too, soon.

Pratima@ Reflection of medicine in fiction                         is of realities a great translation!