The Forgotten Art of Healing

The stupendous advances of science and technology have changed the face of medicine. Medicine is capable of performing amazing feats deemed incredible 50 years ago. Yet paradoxically there is today a deepening disillusion, distrust and even antagonism against medicine and the medical profession. The paradox is indeed striking for around the middle of the last century when science and technology hovered merely in the background and medicine has achieved little, the profession was held in the highest regard and the doctor's image outshone that of any other profession. Today, when science and technology envelop medicine in an all-embracing grasp and when medicine has achieved a great deal, the respect for the profession has plummeted and the image of the physician is increasingly tarnished. To my mind, the main reason for this paradox is because medicine has strayed from its path, has lost its way, has lost its goal. The mechanization of medicine, the hubris of its technology and science has submerged its art, robbed it of its raison d'etre, its humanism. The physician no longer ministers to a distinctive person, but concerns himself with separate malfunctioning organs. The distressed patient, the human being, is frequently forgotten or relegated to the background.

In these days of burgeoning science, the medical student and the doctor are both absorbed in the intricacies of technological advances related to medicine. Yet medicine is learnt and taught at the bedside by listening and talking to the patients, by touching and examining them; not just from books, not from gleaming machines and sophisticated gadgetry, nor from the rapturous attention to beautiful images obtained through computerized or magnetic resonance imaging, endoscopies, angiographies or from other wonderful gifts of science and technology...

Excerpt from The Forgotten Art of Healing by Farokh Erach Udwadia

How very true. How beautifully worded.

The book is a must-read for all involved in the medical field.

I've only read the first of 9 essays and every page is brimming with so much wisdom and truthfulness that I am left simply captivated and mesmerized.