A blog about the inner workings of the field of medicine and its theoretical, practical, and ethical complexities.
By: Aaron Rothstein
February 6, 2018
On Friday, December 8th, 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the 43-year-old French editor of the fashion magazine Elle, suffered a major stroke. He was behind the wheel of his BMW after picking up his son, and suddenly felt as though he were “functioning in slow motion.” His vision blurred and he broke out in a cold sweat. He barely managed...
December 20, 2017
As medical students and resident physicians gain experience they also gain knowledge and confidence. Consequently, young trainees eventually reach a level of comfort in speaking with families and patients about prognosis and disease course. This is part of the purpose of training, as these conversations happen so often that they are an...
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November 27, 2017
There are certain patients who never fade from a doctor’s memory — they make an indelible imprint on one’s training. Thinking back on these patients and their respective hospitalizations is like gazing through a pristine window pane on a clear, sunny day. Often they stick in our memories because one becomes emotionally invested in...
August 4, 2017
Illustration by William Sharp (National Library of Medicine) “What are some common causes of pancreatitis?” The attending physician looked at me as we stood outside of the patient’s room. It was as if she had turned a stage light on over my head while medical students and residents silently waited at my flanks, watching with bated...
April 18, 2017
The imposing mountain of Kilimanjaro in the East African country of Tanzania stands alone amidst the surrounding flatlands and swallows up the horizon with its snow-capped peaks. At once alluring and intimidating, its enormous size provides the kind of thrill and sense of wonder that a child must feel when it becomes conscious of the...
March 17, 2017
I carry the plenum of proof, and everything else, in my face. —Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass The importance of the face in human interactions from the day we are born cannot be overstated. Infants, even if they are blind, communicate their feelings to their parents in large part through facial expressions. For children and adults, so...
February 3, 2017
People sometimes assume that every doctor feels a calling or has a special skill for one area of medicine or another. But the truth is very different for most doctors. Old operating theater in London Wikimedia Commons (Mike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0) When students begin medical school they don’t actually know what medicine entails. Maybe...
December 13, 2016
I recently wrote a short essay for Public Discourse about the “death with dignity” movement. In the piece, titled “All Death is Death Without Dignity,” I compare the palliative-care movement — which seeks to alleviate the physical pain of death, often in the context of hospice care — to the physician-assisted suicide...
September 26, 2016
In 2012, at the Health Innovation Summit in San Francisco, Vinod Khosla, Sun Microsystems co-founder and venture capitalist, declared: “Health care is like witchcraft and just based on tradition.” Biased and fallible physicians, he continued, don’t use enough science or data — and thus machines will someday rightly replace 80...
September 14, 2016
Dr. Stephen Bergman, a psychiatrist, published his now-famous satirical novel The House of God under the pseudonym Samuel Shem in August 1978. The book’s protagonist, a young intern, describes the emotional and physical difficulties during the first year of residency. With more than two million copies sold, the work is something of a...