There is one certainty for those of us at the edge of medical knowledge, though: we live in the gap together. As Keats witnessed more and more suffering—his brother Tom’s death and the infectious illnesses sweeping London—he connected his aesthetic vision to lived experience. The world, he wrote in a letter, is “the vale of Soul-making”: “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?” Certainly, none of us would choose to suffer. But when we do suffer, we can hope that others acknowledge with us that we live without all the answers.
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