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Anthracosis is accumulation of carbon particles in the lung. Once you gulp carbon down, either as cigarette smoke or city dirt, your body never gets rid of it. It just stays in your lungs.
All surgeons have persecution complexes anyway. Ask the psychiatrists.
I knew perfectly well that anybody can get pregnant by accident. It’s not hard, and it shouldn’t be a crime.”
“I often wonder,” he said, “about what medicine would be like if the predominant religious feeling in this country were Christian Scientist. For most of history, of course, it wouldn’t have mattered; medicine was pretty primitive and ineffective. But supposing Christian Science was strong in the age of penicillin and antibiotics. Suppose there were pressure groups militating against the administration of these drugs. Suppose there were sick people in such a society who knew perfectly well that they didn’t have to die from their illness, that a simple drug existed which would cure them.
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“Morality must keep up with technology, because if a person is faced with the choice of being moral and dead or immoral and alive, they’ll choose life every time.
He could use the familiar line so famous among surgeons and internists that it was abbreviated DHJ: doing his job. That meant that if the evidence was strong enough, you acted and did not care whether you were right or not; you were justified in acting on the evidence.
THE LAST TIME ANYONE COUNTED, there were 25,000 named diseases of man, and cures for 5,000 of them. Yet it remains the dream of every young doctor to discover a new disease. That is the fastest and surest way to gain prominence within the medical profession. Practically speaking, it is much better to discover a new disease than to find a cure for an old one; your cure will be tested, disputed, and argued over for years, while a new disease is readily and rapidly accepted.
It takes a certain kind of man to assume this burden, to set his sights on such a distant goal. By the time he is ready to begin surgery on his own, he has become another person, almost a new breed, estranged by his experience and his dedication from other men. In a sense, that is part of the training: surgeons are lonely men.
Fortunately, history judges men by their actions, not their motivations.
A tense, fearful, suspicious society. In short, a society of reactionary religious fanatics.
We are all tied to the past, individually and collectively. The past shows through in the very structure of our bones, the distribution of our hair, and the coloring of our skin, as well as the way we walk, stand, eat, dress—and think.
Many things in life are difficult to live down, but nothing is more difficult than a name.
The Passing of the Buck is a time-honored ceremony, to be observed in silence.
“In the technicalities lies the strength of the law.” “And the weaknesses.”
I have a bad temper. I know that, and I try to control it, but the truth is I am clumsy and abrupt with people. I guess I don’t like people much; maybe that’s why I became a pathologist in the first place. Looking back over the day, I realized I had lost my temper too often. That was stupid; there was no percentage in it; no gain, and potentially a great deal of loss.
“I adore it. It’s a game, a big wonderful game. A puzzle where nobody knows the answer. If you’re not careful, though, you can become obsessed with the answer.
I feel that a man’s reasons for doing something are less important than the ultimate value of what he does. It is a historical truth that a man may do the wrong thing for the right reasons. In that case he loses. Or he may do the right thing for the wrong reasons. In that case, he is a hero.
“Never take a position unless you are certain it can be defended against any onslaught.
“So I am saying that normal desires can take many forms, some legitimate, some not. Everyone must find a way to deal with them.”
“But we are forced into this by the nature of the laws. In many instances, laws are slanted against a doctor in the doctor-patient relationship.
“But anyway, he was a preacher, and he was a Baptist, and he was strict. He believed in a wrathful god. He believed in thunderbolts from heaven striking a sinner to the ground. He believed in hellfire and damnation for eternity. He believed in right and wrong.” “Do you?” “I believe,” Wilson said, “in fighting fire with fire.” “Is the fire always right?” “No,” he said. “But it is always hot and compelling.” “And you believe in winning.” He touched the scar along his neck. “Yes.” “Even without honor?” “The honor,” he said, “is in winning.” “Is it?”
“The terrible thing,” he said, “is to think back and wonder what you’d do differently. I keep doing that. And I never find the point I’m looking for, that one crucial point in time where I made the wrong turn in the maze.
I tried to forget about the ambulance, because there were millions of ambulances, and millions of people, every day, at every hospital. Eventually, I did forget. Then I was all right.
There is no point in considering these viewpoints. They are advanced, for the most part, by thoughtless and irritable little men.
