Medicine

No physician, sleepless and worried about a patient, can return to the hospital in the midnight hours without feeling the importance of his faith. The dim corridor is silent; the doors are closed. At the end of the corridor in teh glow of the desk lamp, the nurse watches over those who sleep or lie lonely and wait behind closed doors. No physician entering the hospital in these quiet hours can help feeling that the medical institution of which he is part is in essence religious, that it is built on trust. No physician can fail to be proud that he is part of his patient's faith. (Cleveland Clinic surgeon; quotation from 1955) - George Crile, Jr.

I emphasize this because it is to my mind just a passing virtue. Medicine and writing go well together, they shed light on each other and both do better by going hand in hand. A doctor possessed of the writer's art will be the better consoler to anyone rolling in agony; conversely, a writer who understands the life of the body, its powers and its pains, its fluids and functions, its blessings and banes, has a great advantage over him who knows nothing of such things. (from Joseph the Provider; New York; Alfred Knopf, 1944) - Thomas Mann