Sublime

Now it’s not at all unusual for doctors to begin their careers knowing they want to do something in addition to practicing medicine. In fact, a dean at Harvard Medical School tells incoming students to begin thinking from the outset of their careers about what their “hyphen” will be: Physician-scientist? Physician-educator? Physician-advocate?

Shep Nuland, chirurgien-philosophe renommé, donnait encore des cours à la fac de médecine de Yale quand Lucy et moi y fîmes nos classes.

Medical professionals concentrate on repair of health, not sustenance of the soul.

The job of any doctor, Bludau later told me, is to support quality of life, by which he meant two things: as much freedom from the ravages of disease as possible and the retention of enough function for active engagement in the world. Most doctors treat disease and figure that the rest will take care of itself. And if it doesn’t—if a patient is

When there’s no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool.