anonymous
29th October 2018
PHILOSOPHY OF MEDICINE - 1
PHILOSOPHY OF MEDICINE - 1
DR PRAFUL DESAI
Human life does not always follow a charted course. Though
predestined by forces beyond one's control, the journey through life is not
always by design or ambition but can often be due to an incident which can have
a far-reaching effect on the lives of those around. Some such force in my life
- that of my mother - took me into medicine quite inadvertently. Desirous of
making a quick headway into an earning life, my decision to join the
Engineering stream was revoked by my mother's intense desire that her son
should become a saviour of many lives-like how my father was saved in the
pre-antibiotic era at the hands of a very senior and wise surgeon-Dr G.M.
Phadke—in the mid-forties.
I entered the portals of the medical college with no great
ambitious plans or desire-indeed, with a significant amount of apprehension as
to how five or eight or nine long year will pass before I could be on my way
towards a decently earning professional. This was more than four decades ago—1950
to be precise when money and material gains did not rule the roost as it does
now. I joined the Medical stream-mainly by accident but it did make my mother
immensely happy and for me that was of supreme importance.
In 1992 as I look back on what I consider to be an eventful
period in my life, I think mother would have been very happy of her insistence
in my joining medicine. I am naturally very proud to be a medical
professional—a profession in which science, art and human values can
harmoniously blend, unlike in any other profession. I am not being covertly or
overtly chauvinistic about my profession. There cannot be any denial that in no
other profession is one face-to-face with another fellow human being in the
search for health and happiness.
The practice of medicine cannot fail to convince one about
the agility of human existence. Most common diseases which afflict mankind are
self-limiting and one is always better the next morning. Nonetheless, were it not
for the spectacular progress of medical science in controlling infections and
bacterial diseases, millions of lives would have been lost worldwide. It is in
dealing with serious human ailments which afflict our civilization today that
one realizes the limits of modern medicine. For atherosclerosis, heart disease,
strokes, cancer, asthma, chronic arthritis, degenerative nervous system
diseases etc., we have no real answers even today, though much progress has
been achieved.