A friend wrote me after a reading:
"[W]hat I took from it is that there are indeed two MEDICINEs: the science one (read lab animals) and the humanistic one in the best tradition of Hipoocrates forward."
The reference to "two medicines" puts me in mind of the famous essay by C.P. Snow about two cultures: the sciences and the humanities. If you read far enough down in the Wikipedia article about the concept, you see - as with so many concepts - how it becomes complicated and quibbled with out of all recognition.
Sometimes, though, quibbling misses the main point. There are those who are blind to the sciences, and those who are exclusively centered on the virtues of the humanities. Not to say that there isn't overlap, but there should be more.
The same can be said of medicine. To be excellent professionals, doctors and nurses require both technical facility and appreciation of emotional complexity. And by "excellent" here I mean something like "virtuous," in the sense of striving towards perfection of the whole individual.
So, when we are talking about the two medicines, perhaps we should mean that the best of the scientific/biomedical view of the patient, and the humanitarian/narrative/irreducibly complex view should both be united in the provider. If that were the case, whatever action a provider took would be in a deep sense uncategorizable.
Patient-centered care often brings the grandest flights of fancy rudely down to earth. Whether this applies to the idea of "two medicines in one provider" is difficult to say. I do think that most people are looking for a provider who combines multiple virtues: a full person, not a scientific machine nor a device to convert suffering into publishable narrative.
How to cultivate such inner diversity, true balance, without sacrificing depth and accomplishment...?
"[W]hat I took from it is that there are indeed two MEDICINEs: the science one (read lab animals) and the humanistic one in the best tradition of Hipoocrates forward."
The reference to "two medicines" puts me in mind of the famous essay by C.P. Snow about two cultures: the sciences and the humanities. If you read far enough down in the Wikipedia article about the concept, you see - as with so many concepts - how it becomes complicated and quibbled with out of all recognition.
Sometimes, though, quibbling misses the main point. There are those who are blind to the sciences, and those who are exclusively centered on the virtues of the humanities. Not to say that there isn't overlap, but there should be more.
The same can be said of medicine. To be excellent professionals, doctors and nurses require both technical facility and appreciation of emotional complexity. And by "excellent" here I mean something like "virtuous," in the sense of striving towards perfection of the whole individual.
So, when we are talking about the two medicines, perhaps we should mean that the best of the scientific/biomedical view of the patient, and the humanitarian/narrative/irreducibly complex view should both be united in the provider. If that were the case, whatever action a provider took would be in a deep sense uncategorizable.
Patient-centered care often brings the grandest flights of fancy rudely down to earth. Whether this applies to the idea of "two medicines in one provider" is difficult to say. I do think that most people are looking for a provider who combines multiple virtues: a full person, not a scientific machine nor a device to convert suffering into publishable narrative.
How to cultivate such inner diversity, true balance, without sacrificing depth and accomplishment...?
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