Don't teach me, heal me!
I don't know just how true this is - many items that somewhere along the line
become "common knowledge" aren't necessarily true - but I seem to recall
learning that until the end of the 19th century doctors, rather than healing patients,
basically did little more than comfort them. True or not, when I read that doctors
today are engaged in "patient education", I wonder whether we're on the verge
of another shift in the roles that doctors play in our lives. Modern doctors have
no doubt gone beyond the "giving comfort" stage. They're actually capable
of intervening in a very positive, and constructive, sense. But perhaps we're
also at a point at which we're hitting upon the limits of intervention and that
doctors are discovering that there's only so much that they can do to heal. In
a situation such as that, I can well understand that education becomes a
new goal. But even if that's true - I still think I'd prefer being healed.
Go to: Virtual worlds, and real health.