Tag: philosophy
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What is it like to be a…?
I should have known not to answer her question like that. I should have seen the book she was reading; I should have seen how heavy her briefcase was… But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m a doctor now -an obstetrician/gynaecologist- but in the beginning I wanted to head in an an entirely different direction:…
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The Solopsist
I have always been influenced by something Lewis Thomas, the American polymath writer-physician once said at a lecture I attended. He felt he would be better served by a doctor who had read Shakespeare than someone who had merely focussed all of his formative years on learning medicine. His point, I think, was that to…
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The Awe of BRCA
Awe: the word has been pasteurized, connotized almost beyond recognition. But I suppose that’s what happens to all really powerful words. There’s a life-span to language; a generation if you’re lucky; a year if social media gets hold of it –likes it… But I think the ship of awe and all of its elegance went down quickly -even before…
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Health
Do we expect too much Health? Or perhaps less controversially, do we expect too much of Health? Are our expectations realistic or even attainable? Do we really know what Health is -or for that matter, is not? It’s an important point and one that should not be dismissed as mere academic quibbling. Perhaps, to paraphrase St.…
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Over thirty-five years of listening and helping, but still not an expert
There’s one thing I have to confess at the start: I am not an expert on women. I do not inhabit a female body, nor, apart from what is in the sample cupboard, do I have special access to estrogen and its secrets. Although I’ve delivered thousands of babies, I cannot honestly say that I…