A blog about the inner workings of the field of medicine and its theoretical, practical, and ethical complexities.
By: Aaron Rothstein
April 2, 2014
There’s no question that one of the most difficult things to get used to about the hospital is the smell — or, rather, the smells. This is especially true on a surgery service where many patients undergo multiple operations. Some need a leg or foot amputated. Others need open abdominal surgery and can’t control their bowel...
March 28, 2014
There is much in Leo Tolstoy’s frightening and brilliant story The Death of Ivan Ilyich that is relevant to my previous post about CPR in the hospital. The novella concerns an upper-middle-class judge, Ivan Ilyich, his rise within the Russian legal system, and his subsequent death. Tolstoy describes Ilyich’s unremarkable and...
March 26, 2014
Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death? — Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written In a Country Churchyard” The graveyard shift, or overnight shift, in the hospital is a singular experience — quietude envelops...
March 24, 2014
Doctors practice “grand rounds,” ca. 1920s. (National Library of Medicine) This post is meant to provide a bit of background about how the day works and how a medical team functions so the references I make in future posts are clear. Let’s begin with the team. Nearly every medical team at an academic hospital consists of an...
March 24, 2014
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll says, “when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me, and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.” It is appropriate that Stevenson chose a physician as...