Of the Healthy, the Unhealthy and Doctors

O who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite

By bare imagination of a feast?

Or Wallow naked in December snow

By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?

– SHAKESPEARE IN KING RICHARD II

The banished Bolingbroke says these lines in despair, meaning that mere imagination cannot enable one to bear the pangs of separation or pain. How easy it is for a man who has never personally experienced misery, to render unsolicited advice to ignore misery, to a person actually experiencing agony.

There are millions of people who sail through life without having had a single serious disease, thanks to nature’s gift of a strong constitution at birth itself, with all the organs in ‘Mint Condition’; of course they might have had the usual bouts of minor infections which last for a few days requiring no treatment. They reach adulthood unscathed with no residual effects.

These healthy individuals become incapable of appreciating sickness, to the point of being utterly indifferent to, and even contemptuous of, people suffering from various kinds of ailments. These are the extremely lucky persons, who while gorging themselves with mouthwatering dishes at a restaurant or a feast, take a look at the empty plates of their unfortunate relatives and friends without even feeling sorry for them. On the other hand, they cannot even conceal their annoyance when they notice a person hesitating to taste some dish kept on the table, as though the latter’s presence is an affront to their host’s hospitality.

No wonder for these healthy specimens of the human race who have never had a single stomach ailment, life is a bowl of cherries and not a single moment is wasted. Each day is packed with entertainment and sumptuous feasts (they have the habit of describing each and every dish whether it is Shahi Kurma, or Panneer, Butter Masala (spicy Indian dishes) or straberry daiquiri (a cocktail) with a vivid gusto and enthusiasm in great detail. They have no pity for those afflicted with agonizing and chronic stomach disorders like irritable bowel Syndrome or ‘Crohn’s disease’ or condemned to a restricted diet all their lives by ‘diabetes’, no sympathy for victims of ‘Grandmal’ who live in constant fear of another attack all their lives, or little children afflicted with pneumonia whose lungs knock at their ribs ‘against the use of nature’.

I know a man who used to make fun of guests who did not eat well at parties due to some chronic ailments. He would wonder why they had bothered to come to the party spoiling the atmosphere. This man realized what it was to be sick much later, when he himself came down with a serious ailment. His courage had vanished like a gambler ’s lucky streak!

Let us now come to doctors. By virtue of their profession they may be familiar with the symptoms, diagnostic procedures and treatment of most of the diseases, though they themselves cannot be expected to have had personal experience of every disease apart from their own quota of a few minor ailments. For example, a doctor may know how to treat infective hepatitis, but he himself might have never had it. This is where the problem arises because, when a patient having this terrible ailment, complains about lack of appetite or nausea, the doctor, for no fault of his, cannot. experience the same distress. There will always be a gap between his own perception of the patient’s agony and the actual suffering experienced by the patient.

In fact, this is true of almost all the diseases. This gap can never be closed and the only course open for the doctor is to lend a sympathetic ear to the patient’s woes. Since treatment relies to a large extent on reassurance, a doctor who loses patience or snaps at a patient, howsoever number of times he repeats his symptoms, might as well stop practicing, instead of giving up the noble principles on which the edifice of medical treatment is based.