how the poor die - June 2022

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

how the poor die by George Orwell is our May 2022 Short Story/Novella Read.

This discussion will open on Juue 1

Beware Short Story Discussions will have Spoilers

[Lynn, New School Classics]

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-...

This is a quick essay to read. You can easily finish in one sitting. George Orwell discusses his experience in a hospital for the poor in the year 1927. His essay was written in 1947. Unfortunately, his description of this hospital shows how very little had changed in it since the 1800s. He did have a positive contrast to this badly run hospital when speaking of the more modern English hospitals of the day.

I gave the essay 4* not because I liked it, but because of the truths it tells. It reminded me very much of the descriptions of hospitals during the American Civil War in the 1860s. An author who comes to mind is Louisa May Alcott.

[Heather L]

Adding a link to the Tennyson poem mentioned in the essay, “In the Children’s Hospital:Emmie” —

https://www.bartleby.com/library/poem...

[Gini]

Bob, your comment is true, sadly, in many systems. Lack of wealth isn't the problem there. However, most of the teams I have worked with do try to remember that knee in 443B is a person too. Situations, like covid, push the limits of endurance and caring practice.

[Lynn, New School Classics]

Gini wrote: "Bob, your comment is true, sadly, in many systems. Lack of wealth isn't the problem there. However, most of the teams I have worked with do try to remember that knee in 443B is a person too. Situat..."

I understand what you are saying. The institutions can be hard on the caregivers and the patients both. I think one frustration for me is that as our knowledge about human physiology grows, we understand more and more clearly what the problems are without being about to fix them. I know I would not have survived the pneumonia I had about 14 years ago if not for antibiotics and I thank God for the miracle drugs, but there is so much else that cannot be fixed.

[Anjali]

In a nutshell, being poor and caught by disease is a cruel combination of misfortune.

[Sneha]

Lynn wrote: "I gave the essay 4* not because I liked it, but because of the truths it tells."

I agree with what you say here, Lynn. I also gave it 4 stars because it tells a truth that in many ways is still relevant.

[Sneha]

I especially liked these lines in the penultimate paragraph:

However great the kindness and the efficiency, in every hospital death there will be some cruel, squalid detail, something perhaps too small to be told but leaving terribly painful memories behind, arising out of the haste, the crowding, the impersonality of a place where every day people are dying among strangers.

This I feel is still true today. There is a kind of business-like apathy and impersonality in the medicine industry. I have seen this happen first-hand, in slightly altered forms, especially in the mental illness and neurodivergence conversations in medical fields.

[Gini]

Lynn, what needs fixing the most is the human heart and that will not ever be fixed by drugs or money.

[Lynn, New School Classics]

Gini wrote: "Lynn, what needs fixing the most is the human heart and that will not ever be fixed by drugs or money."

Good point.

[J_BlueFlower]

But, oh, he can write....

"I myself, with an exceptionally fine specimen of a bronchial rattle, sometimes had as many as a dozen students queuing up to listen to my chest. It was a queer feeling — queer, I mean, because of their intense interest in learning their job, together with a seeming lack of any perception that the patients were human beings. It is strange to relate, but sometimes as some young student stepped forward to take his turn at manipulating you he would be actually tremulous with excitement, like a boy who has at last got his hands on some expensive piece of machinery."

A fine little essay.

Having recently read about the hospital scenes in The House of the Dead (this months old read), it is hard not to compare. Here the Doctors care about the patients but.... Well, I don't know what place, I would try to avoid the hardest.

[Klowey]

Gini wrote: "Bob, your comment is true, sadly, in many systems. Lack of wealth isn't the problem there. However, most of the teams I have worked with do try to remember that knee in 443B is a person too. Situat..."

I was thinking about the early videos and photos I saw of China when COVID first hit. People seemed to be dropping like flies, both on the streets and in the hospitals. The halls had become wards.

I also thought that, even in the past 50 years (or maybe even today) teaching hospitals can be impersonal and maybe considered cruel as the doctor and students discuss a patient's illness/disease right at the bedside.

Loved this line from the essay:
"the celebrated swindler, Madame Hanaud, who was ill while on remand, was taken to the Hôpital X, and after a few days of it she managed to elude her guards, took a taxi and drove back to the prison, explaining that she was more comfortable there."