The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on DoctorsShaw, Bernard
Philosophy
The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors
Shaw, Bernard
Physicians
8. Treat persons who profess to be able to cure disease as you
treat fortune tellers.
9. Keep the public carefully informed, by special statistics and
announcements of individual cases, of all illnesses of doctors or in
their families.
10. Make it compulsory for a doctor using a brass plate to
have inscribed on it, in addition to the letters indicating his
qualifications, the words "Remember that I too am mortal."
11. In legislation and social organization, proceed on the principle
that invalids, meaning persons who cannot keep themselves alive by their
own activities, cannot, beyond reason, expect to be kept alive by
the activity of others. There is a point at which the most energetic
policeman or doctor, when called upon to deal with an apparently drowned
person, gives up artificial respiration, although it is never possible
to declare with certainty, at any point short of decomposition, that
another five minutes of the exercise would not effect resuscitation. The
theory that every individual alive is of infinite value is legislatively
impracticable. No doubt the higher the life we secure to the individual
by wise social organization, the greater his value is to the community,
and the more pains we shall take to pull him through any temporary
danger or disablement. But the man who costs more than he is worth is
doomed by sound hygiene as inexorably as by sound economics.
12. Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.
13. Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is
what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive
yourself.
14. Take the utmost care to get well born and well brought up. This
means that your mother must have a good doctor. Be careful to go to
a school where there is what they call a school clinic, where your
nutrition and teeth and eyesight and other matters of importance to you
will be attended to. Be particularly careful to have all this done at
the expense of the nation, as otherwise it will not be done at all, the
chances being about forty to one against your being able to pay for it
directly yourself, even if you know how to set about it. Otherwise
you will be what most people are at present: an unsound citizen of an
unsound nation, without sense enough to be ashamed or unhappy about it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account