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'Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get [fed up with] one, I spend the night with the other.'
Keywords
aphorisms, proverbs; medicine; career choice; literature; music
'I feel more confident and more satisfied with myself when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it is irregular, it is less boring this way, and besides, neither of them loses anything through my infidelity.'
Such were the words of renowned Russian playwright and doctor, Anton Chekhov, in a letter written to his friend Alexei Suvorin on 11 September 1888. It is well known that many doctors pursue interests outside medicine. Anton Chekhov, for example, was perhaps better known for his work as a playwright rather than as a doctor.
So how common is this phenomenon of two-timing doctors?
With this question in mind, we shall distinguish the simple pursuit of after-work recreational activities from the pursuit of a hobby that requires a substantial investment of time and effort. This article will compare activities that require active participation and involvement with those that require passive or minimal effort. Essentially, we seek to elucidate the phenomenon of doctors who have, as Chekhov described, 'two professions'. Consequently, excluded studies were those that sought to describe a doctor's after-work recreational activities,1 such as televisionwatching patterns and preferred television shows,2 preferred genre of book in recreational reading, attendance of cinemas, etc.
Perhaps rather unsurprisingly, a literature search using appropriate keywords...