The medical doctor

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The medical doctor: who is this guy? Who is this person, who desires to be a healer?

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Since the dawn of time, all human communities, even the most primitive, had counted on someone to treat sick people, sometimes considered a kind of magician or sorcerer, with supernatural powers.

The concepts have changed, but there is still today a reminder of this old belief; we still consider doctors must have a “vocation”, a “calling”, a special talent, in order to practice their profession. At least, doctors must be performing students, since in most countries the access to Medical School is reserved for those with better grades, or the ones who succeed the difficult exams to enter University. It is understandable, because doctors will take care of the most important asset we have, the very thing that will keep us alive – our health.

We take for granted the concept that the search for healing is a logical idea; but if we give it some thought, if we try to free our mind from its previous conditioning, we will see in this attitude a special attempt to thwart the perishable nature of our universe, what we know about the universe.

In fact, doctors are always working against the current; their purpose is to reverse the natural processes that make us perish. In this sense, until today it is expected from doctors a vocation to the supernatural, not far from the sorcerer of primitive tribes. I say “supernatural” in its strictest meaning, of course, that is to say, beyond the laws of nature (of this universe, as we know it).

Of course, in order to treat sick people, the doctors have at their disposal only tools created in this same universe, and subject to the same laws. It does not change the fact it is an action to counter our perishable nature – it seems paradoxical, and I say “seems”, because we know so little about ourselves that it would be arrogant to cultivate certainties.

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There is a conflict I observe between the concept that we belong in this perishable world and our propensity to escape it. The search for healing, the efforts to increase life expectancy, would that be a sign, perhaps, that finitude does not serve us? That our integrity does not belong in this pattern offered by this perishable universe, as we know it?

(Excerpt from: VIEIRA-MONTFILS, M.C. In the backstage of cancer. Petropolis, Brazil: KBR, 2015 [1])

[1] http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00W46DHR6