When Doctors Get Sick

1. Neuropsychiatric Disorders

   1. Cerebral Concussion

      • Lawrence R. Freedman

      Pages 131-138

   2. Alcoholism

      • Magoo

      Pages 139-142

   3. Depression

      • Louise Redmond

      Pages 143-150

   4. Depression

      • A. Rosemary Mackenzie

      Pages 151-158

   5. Manic-Depressive Psychosis

      • Michael Rose

      Pages 159-168

2. Gastrointestinal Diseases

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 169-169

      PDF

   2. Ulcerative Colitis and Avascular Necrosis of Hips

      • Judith Alexander Brice

      Pages 171-192

   3. Ulcerative Colitis

      • Louise Scott

      Pages 193-199

   4. Ulcerative Colitis

      • Maurice Raskin

      Pages 201-211

   5. Ulcerative Colitis

      • Mallory Stephens

      Pages 213-227

   6. Crohn’s Disease

      • R. F. Spooner

      Pages 229-241

   7. Crohn’s Disease

      • David E. Hein

      Pages 243-257

   8. Duodenal Ulcer

      • Harrison F. Wood

      Pages 259-265

3. Cancer

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 267-267

      PDF

   2. Anaplastic Carcinoma of Neck

      • Albert Luther

      Pages 269-275

   3. Brain Tumour

      • John A. McCool

      Pages 277-286

   4. Malignant Melanoma

      • Harvey Mandell

      Pages 287-293

   5. Malignant Melanoma

      • Nicholas V. Steiner

      Pages 295-304

   6. Hodgkin’s Disease

      • Charles S. Kleinman

      Pages 305-316

   7. Cancer of Sigmoid

      • James C. Hayes

      Pages 317-320

When a doctor gets sick, his status changes. No longer is his role de­ fined as deriving from doctus, i. e. , learned, but as from patiens, the present participle of the deponent verb, patior, i. e. , to suffer, with all the passive acceptance of pain the verb implies. From pass us, the past participle, we get the word passion, with its wide gamut of emotional allusions, ranging from animal lust to the sufferings of martyrs. It is the connotation, not the denotation, of the word that defines the change of status. When a doctor is sick enough to be admitted to a hospital, he can no longer write orders; orders are written about him, removing him from control of his own situation. One recalls a sonnet from W. H. Auden's sequence, The Quest, which closes with the lines: Unluckily they were their situation: One should not give a poisoner medicine, A conjuror fine apparatus, Nor a rifle to a melancholic bore. That is a reasonable expression of twentieth-century skepticism and ra­ tionalism. Almost all medical literature is written from the doctor's point of view. Only a few medically trained writers-one thinks of Chekhov's Ward Six-manage to incorporate the patient's response to his situa­ tion. Patients' voices were not much in evidence until well into the twentieth century, but an early example is John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624).

• Diabetes
• Diabetes mellitus
• cancer
• cell
• diseases
• hepatitis
• hospital
• leukemia
• medicine
• neoplasm
• pregnancy

• The William W. Backus Hospital, Norwich, USA

  Harvey Mandell

• Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, USA

  Howard Spiro

Policies and ethics