Why We Revered Doctors
Jan. 2012

Most of us have since childhood come to think of doctors as “those who can heal the sick”. And what is more pleasing, more anticipated than to be healed of a blight or malady which has interrupted our pursuit of happiness? Is it the fact that a doctor spends a large amount of his life in study of the human body? We don’t know this as children, nor do we care when adults, we only care that a “doctor” is a solution to the one commodity we most abhor, and in most cases can do nothing about, pain.

In fact, there are doctors in locales around the earth who have had little formal education, but they can take away pain, or so appear to do. And one reason these “doctors” can take away a person’s pain or at least reduce it, is the ability to confront pain or its source. I think of Solomon and his handling of the two women who were fighting for the possession of a baby, each saying to the great king that it was hers. Finally Solomon declares, “since neither of the two women will relent, let the baby be divided in half.” This the true mother would not allow it, instantly, and thus the debate ended there.

For ages, there have been “natural cures” and there have been “country doctors” using holistically based (meaning non-pharmaceutical) preparations to sooth pain and relieve discomfiture in humans and in animals. And still do. But even they have degrees. And have to have or they go to the hoosegow.

Since it is against the law in many states to cure such diseases as tuberculosis, cancer, arthritis, leukemia, poliomyelitis, asthma, diabetes etc., we may find fault with the AMA, even the medical boards of some hospitals, because they too come under the watchful eye of the AMA and FDA. But the single doctor who uses both modern medicinal treatments and a spate of homeopathic (home remedies too) never goes without admiration from his patients. Sadly few of these artisans remain today. And that is why we revered doctors.