Lessons

by Ian McEwan

Roland said all this to Lawrence in a hospital corridor. One of his careless rants – doctors were probably walking by and heard him. Two centuries passed before the establishment thought it worthwhile to look down a microscope to examine the micro-organisms Antonie van Leeuwenhoek had described in 1673. They set themselves against hygiene because it was an insult to the profession, against anaesthesia because pain was a God-given element of illness, against the germ theory of disease because Aristotle and Galen thought otherwise, against evidence-based medicine because that was not how things were done. They clung to their leeches and cupping for as long as possible. Into the mid-twentieth century, they defended mass tonsillectomy of children, despite the evidence. In the end, the profession always came round. One day they would come round to the right of a rational person to choose death rather than unbearable unrelievable pain. Too late for Daphne.