Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Graduating medical school, "we" all stood and repeated, deep within our private solemnity, a modern version of the Hippocratic oath. Nowhere is a "we" to be seen. Instead, "I swear... I will keep... I will impart... I will follow..." transitions us from students to practitioners.

Friday, June 4th, 2010

The most difficult question I am asked, by patients, is "Why?" Why did I become an addict? Why do I still have cravings? Why do I slip up and use, even thought I know it's wrong and I feel stupid and horrible doing it?

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Drugs, such as were available to mid 19th-century regular physicians, where usually mineral in origin. Primarily because of their speed of onset and severity of action, they were initially favored over botanical derivatives for they quickly authenticated the power of a physician's intervention.

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Now, I have never taken malpractice personally. Like most of my colleagues, I have been sued. Three cases over the last 29 years. (I am currently ahead, 2-1.) The average physician get sued once every 7 years. I was overdue.

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Modern medicine's technological advances now allow more people to live long enough to develop chronic diseases where the mortality is low but the morbidity high. Hyperchondriacs are acutely aware of this, and perceive great threats in their aging and the future. Hyperchondriacs have similar attributes to hypochondrial patients even as they lack the attendant "symptoms" of a physiologic illness.

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

I confronted the banal face of our inefficient healthcare system, and it stares back at me in my mirror.