Medicine and books

Mould's Medical Anecdotes, Omnibus Edition

We medical writers are truly blessed; not only are we great people and famously skilful and sensitive lovers, but we also have another huge and enduring advantage over our lay colleagues. "If you can't laugh at your patients, what good are they?" said the eminent psychiatrist Dr Frasier Crane, with all the conviction and veracity that only a fictional television character in a drunken stupor can summon, and, like the idiot savant, his words disclose a deeper truth.

As doctors, we have a treasure chest of material at our fingertips, an Aladdin's cave of little morality plays, droll spoofs, and funny stories about the people who come through our surgery door each day. We are the observers, the flies on the wall, the I-Spy camera—in the picture yet not part of it, eternally standing back in judgment and commentary. Like the great novelists, we are involved with our "characters," yet we retain the ability to be objective, to tell the story without prejudice, to draw objective conclusions.

Is your deadline rushing up, a spectral Hulk Hogan gripping your creative muse in an unbreakable headlock? Mrs Mageogh will come to the rescue; her hilarious varicose veins in the shape of the Statue of Liberty should be good for a laugh, followed up with a few wise words about the prevention and treatment of varicose veins and the final mandatory admonition to see your own doctor if you are worried. In the interests of confidentiality, of course, reassign her gender, and change the Statue of Liberty to the Eiffel Tower.

View larger version (0K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Scanning electron micrograph of a human hair cell from the inner ear. From the introductory volume of Scott-Brown's Otolaryngology (Butterworth-Heinemann, £595, ISBN 0 7506 1935 X), a largely British text now in its sixth edition, with six volumes covering respectively basic sciences, audiology, otology, rhinology, laryngology and head and neck surgery, and paediatric diseases.

And now we don't even need to see our patients any more: this book, a compilation of the first two in the series, will supply all the source material a medical writer could ever need. The bizarre coincidence, the scientific oddity, the edifying and instructive historical anecdote, the quack remedy, the pithy little quote; they're all in here, collected, apparently, in an utterly random yet charming manner. Tales about Byron's corpse, monologues about suicide and death, an inventory of George Washington's medical supplies, the surgical hazards of Babylon in 1000 BC. A sense of wonder and delight at the perversity and eccentricity of life runs throughout. I'd love to organise a rake of beers with Dr Mould so that I could nick some of his stories; the ultimate compliment of one writer for another.

Rating:***

Liam Farrell, general practitioner, Crossmaglen, County Armagh 

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Evans, A. E., Edmundson-Drane, E., Harris, K. K., Campbell-Ray, T. (2002). A Cervical Cancer CD-ROM Intervention for College-Age Women: Lessons Learned from Development and Formative Evaluation. Health Promot Pract 3: 447-456 [Abstract]