The pimping of young doctors

Headnote

Dispatch

In medical education circles, "pimping" has a unique meaning. The slang expression, whose origins are obscure, was popularized in a July 7, 1989, column in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Frederick Brancati, a long-time director of internal medicine at Johns Flopkins University. "Pimping occurs whenever an attending poses a series of very difficult questions to an intern or student," he wrote. "In the heat of the pimp, the young intern is hammered and wrought into the framework of the ward team. Pimping welds the hierarchy of academics in place, so the edifice of medicine may be erected securely, generation upon generation."

Dr. Brancati-whose 2013 obituary noted his "dazzling sense of humor"-even...