‘Cutting For Stone,’ and Considering the Experience of Practicing Medicine

A short note on Cutting for Stone, a novel I’ve just read by Dr. Abraham Verghese. He’s an expert clinician and professor at Stanford. The author uses rich language to detail aspects of Ethiopian history, medicine and quirks of human nature. The book’s a bit long but a page-turner, like some lives, taking a strange and sometimes unexpected course.

For today I thought I’d mention one passage that haunts me. It appears early on, when the protagonist, a man in middle age reflects on his life and why he became a physician:

My intent wasn’t to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. But it can also deepen the wound.

The point is, a physician may be immersed in his work in a manner that he is, in effect, “addicted” to practicing medicine – a term Verghese uses later on in the book. There’s an emotional boost, or relief, some doctors glean by their daily tasks. An example he gives is a surgeon who feels better upon seeing his patient, who’d been sick, recovering nicely after an operation. This applies in other fields, including oncology.

I get this. It’s an under-discussed aspect of being a doctor, articulated well in some characters’ pathology and passion.

More on this, later, elsewhere –

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