Reflections

The relationship between doctors and their patients has undergone a sea change in India . Gone are the days of paternalism, when doctors ordered and the patients listened. But in today's consumer driven market place, this no longer holds good. However such concerns are not just Indian. Similar concerns consume American doctors as well. I am reproducing an opinion by an American anesthesiologist  Shirie Leng  , . Originally from the KevinMD, this post examines one reason for the gulf that has appeared in the trust between doctors and patients. " The subject matter has hit a nerve.  The first post was about how we use and misuse numbers in medicine, and the second made the case that patients are not customers in the retail sense. The opinions in both cases were pretty much split between people who agreed with me wholeheartedly and those who thought me the most misguided idiot doctor ever to approach a keyboard. Why these subjects?  Why are issues of buyi...

Flag of the Ghadr Party  I was recently reading a history of the Ghadr party, the US based mainly Sikh group which played an important part in the freedom struggle, particularly during the First World War.Someday I will write of the Komagata Maru incident; the final bloody finale to that chapter took place in Budge Budge where I have lived for some years in the eighties and nineties. Anyway, on reading the book I came across the name of Baba Hari Singh Usman. I am ashamed to say that I had never heard of him earlier. There does not seem to be much scholarly investigation about him , at least nothing that I could access from the internet. However I did come across this very emotional article written by a Mr Prem Singh Bajaj which was originally published in the   Tribune, Chandigarh. I reproduce it here. It is thrilling story that spans the world and reminds us of times when great sacrifices were made for our freedom.   " While the nation was celebrating the I...

This is  series of pictures of a fishing boat landing its catch on Cherai Beach, Kochi Kerala. The pictures were taken on my recent trip in February Two fishermen at dawn, drawing in the lines  Work over, they rest for a while  Man's best friend awaits the landing of the catch  They now head for the shore  The boat has landed  Pushing the boat on to the beach Well above the tideline  Ah: The catch ! What are those? Swordfish?  Sorting the catch  Not much reward for a quite strenuous work 

It is difficult for practicing physicians to win the Nobel Prize. Nobels are nowadays mostly awarded for laboratory based research and no matter how innovative the surgical technique that is conceived of and popularized, it is well-nigh impossible for a surgeon to make the grade. I personally cannot understand what was lacking in Michael Debakey’s accomplishments, that he never won the prize despite repeated nominations. I should have thought that someone who revoutionised vascular and to some extent cardiac surgery and strode the world of twentieth century medicine like a colossus would have done enough to deserve it, but somehow the powers that be thought differently. I can think of several other names in the surgical field who richly deserved the prize. The surgeons who did win the prize, however often won for work in areas other than surgery. Theodor Kocher  The first to be awarded was the king of surgery in the late nineteenth century and the person who standardi...

Here I was, reading a chapter on “Oral & Parenteral Opioid Analgesics” while all of a sudden I visualized the beautiful poppy flower, its petals as soft as silk and as delicate as a baby’s cheek and my heart soared with the memory of banks and banks of poppies I had seen, all along the roadside in Central Europe, particularly when travelling from Prague to Budapest during our last summer holidays. As my thoughts wandered in between pearls of medical wisdom and poetic imagery, I thought of the various ways the innocent and seemingly harmless poppy had made ingress into medicine, drug abuse, wars, and literature and as a symbol of remembrance.  Opium use predates recorded history (3000 BC) and use of opioids for pain management has oscillated between indiscriminate use even a short century ago even among the elite  to the severe restrictions of today which has left many a patient suffering from severe pain, unrelieved. Morphine, the opiate obtained from the poppy plan...

I start walking at about 12 Noon. The bus has taken a full two hours to come 80 odd kilometers. The only saving grace is that the roads this year are as smooth as silk, or as close to silk as Indian roads can be. However, with the sunshine on your back, the forests beckoning, all else can be ignored. As I stride down the road the Chapramari closes around me. The trees are green; I can easily deduce it has rained a lot this year. Ferns prolferate There are butterflies galore; one soon sits on my path allowing me to get a good shot. Birds are everywhere: sunbirds, barbets, an odd kingfisher, egrets and paddy herons crowd the clearings. I am not equipped for photography, I have only my trusty aim and shoot, and so I cannot record the birdlife. As I grow older, I am a lot less interested in doing so, I like to enjoy the day rather than spend my energies in getting the best shots. I soon reach the crossing where the road to Batabari goes off to the right; I will go left towards the Ja...

One of the chief pleasures of life in North Bengal is the proximity of the forests of the Dooars. From Siliguri you can , literally within minutes, reach several forests which are rich in birdlife, dissected by fast flowing rivers and can add a frisson of danger as they are home to elephant herds. When I was living in Siliguri, one of our favourite family days were when we drove out to Chalsa and then walked: sometimes down the Lataguri road, sometimes from the Batabari crossing to the Murti river and on one memorable occasion we drove north wards from Khunia Crossing to picnic in the deep forests of Chapramari. This time I had time for one walk. Now that we come to Siliguri for holidays, I do not need to be confined to Sundays and I can choose any day when it is crisp and cold, the sun is out and the Kanchenjunga can be seen from the plains. I chose the 23 rd December. Two of the three conditions that I like were fulfilled, but the Kanchenjunga , alas was not to be seen. We were ...