A is for aphorism: 'Wherever the art of medicine is loved there is also a love of humanity'

Headnote

Keywords

aphorisms; proverbs, medicine; art; humanity

He was an amazing diagnostician. He could listen to the history and then with this long, pointy, bony finger he'd say, "So, what do you think was significant in that bit of the history? What did you feel there as you examined the abdomen? Did you look at this here? Have you seen these?" But he was a very warm person too - just so caring.

Years after the experience, this senior doctor remembered with fondness and laughter a clinical teacher from her junior years. she described someone who seemed to exemplify the hippocratic aphorism 'wherever the art of medicine is loved there is also a love of humanity'. but is there any evidence that those doctors who love the art of medicine also love humanity, or is the art of medicine just 'romantic rhetoric - a nod in the direction of humanitarianism'?1

The American cartoonist charles M schulz had a way of nailing this kind of problem. In a 1959 Peanuts cartoon, lucy laughs at linus when he tells her he wants to be a doctor. she responds by shouting at him: "you could never be a doctor! you know why? because you don't love mankind, that's why!" linus thinks for a moment, before shouting back: "I love mankind... it's people I can't stand!!" his response captures a feeling familiar to us all. It's so easy to love in the abstract, so difficult to love in the particular.

Arthur Frank, in his book 'The Wounded storyteller', describes stories that our Western culture tends to use around illness.2 One of these stories he calls the chaos narrative. 'chaos' describes a situation where there is layer on layer on layer of problems 'that go down to the bottomless depths'. solving one problem uncovers another and another and another. Patients in chaos manage their lives one overwhelming day at a time. General practitioners who help these patients to navigate their difficult life course say it is like gardening in a swamp: it is challenging, messy and has the potential for great despair.3

Our aphorism links the art of medicine with a love of humanity. For the sake of the discussion, we should assume the love of humanity involves a love...