DOCTORS AND DRUGS

D. Ranga Rao

Doctors can be divided into three categories. Some are born great. They are the benefactors of mankind. They sweat and toil for the well being of man. They are humble and devoted to their work. They are not lured by power or pelf. They shun publicity and work silently. They are the inspired beings. Some others become great. They win fame and make a name by their hard work. They occupy positions of authority, influence people and make friendship with those who count in society. They are favoured by Mammon. The last kind lead obscure lives. Their merit is not recognised. Their work is not known. Fortune, the wayward dame, does net smile on them.

Medical men, whether they practice or profess, have certain characteristic traits. They always speak encouragingly, always pat assuringly. They all have searching fingers and prying eyes. Some doctors see through the diseases of the objects of suffering. Some others see through the purses of their patients. They all smell of antiseptics. Their smiles radiate health wherever they go. Their very presence dispels fear of death. However one must bear in mind that stethoscopes do not a doctor make or shining scalpels a surgeon. What is essential is the strength of spirit.

Doctors have acquired the power of gods. They hold in their palms the destinies of their patients. They are the preservers and the Destroyers. They can cure or kill at will. The passing of time improves their methods of medication and bulges their bank accounts.

Doctors are the personification of patience and perseverance, service and sacrifice, compassion and kindness. But they are not above human weaknesses. Some are greedy and avaricious, heartless and cruel, haughty and harsh. Doctors in general are a tough race. They keep surprisingly fit and seldom fall ill. It is funny and tragic to see a sickly doctor, lean and lank, coughing and sneezing who needs doctoring himself. However, Doctors inspite of their healing powers, are as mortal as their patients. Death lays his icy hand on doctors, physician and surgeon must tumble down.

Doctors make a privileged class. They are revered and respected, loved and envied. They weild great authority in society. The most powerful politician must bow before his doctor. The most accomplished statesman has to unbutton before his physician. The hero many bloody battles, his swelling chest decorated with medals and ribbons has to crouch, crawl and cringe at the command of his surgeon. The polished dandy and the vain society woman, the much admired muscle man and the more adored beauty queen — all have to strip and stand ‘in native honour clad’ at the behest of the doctor.

It is easy to detect a doctor in this passing show of the vanity fair of man. The best maintained bungalow and the finest car give them out. It is a pleasure to see a doctor driving his or her posh car in their best clothes, content and dignified, with their chin held high over the steering, sinking soft and deep into the seat. To observe the doctors in their natural habitat, the hospital, is more rewarding. Walking along the gleaming floors of the hospital, in their long white coats, their hands in the apron pockets, preoccupied in mind or thoughtful in looks, their faces fresh as flowers, with a meaningful nod here and a highly professional smile there, the stethoscope dangling importantly around their necks framing the neatly knotted tie or the well cut blouse, handsomely bald or stylishly groomed, accompanied by the nightingale nurses in lilly white, the doctors present a perfect picture of confidence inspiring reverential awe. They seem all the more formidable and forbidding when flock, of raw medicos, unsure and awkward, run in hushed silence behind their masters with their note books open and their pencils poised for any profound medical truth that may escape their learned lips.

To look at the pictures past and present. Once there were family doctor’s. Now there are families of doctors. Also syndicates of doctors. The family doctor of yester years healed the patients from head to heel. Now the doctors treat only the head or the heel, only parts of the body. Specialisation is the order of the day, of limbs and organs. The doctors of the olden days were physicians and surgeons. Now the doctors are physicians or surgeons. Gone are the days of dispensaries, compounders, marked mixture bottles and ounce glasses. Now we have multifaculty, super speciality hospitals manned by Super specialists, computers, Scanners and what not. Now the doctor looks at the monitor and the machine diagnoses the disease. The printer presents the prescription. Medical science no doubt has made great strides. The benefaction indeed is great. So too blundering.

Coming to drugs, they are of three kinds. The tabloid, the capsuloid and the liquid. I like the drugs, whatever their form, as I like the doctors, whatever their sex. Drugs are as essential to modern man as zips and buttons are for the trousers and jackets he wear’s. The rising and setting of the sun is followed and preceded by the act of swallowing of drugs. The swing of the pendulum and the jerk of the hands the cloak remind us of the drugs we have to take — our dawn to dusk companions. People reckon the time of the day not so much by the hands of the clock as by the drugs they have to consume morn, noon and eventide. Kings and cobblers, princes and prelates, Presidents of Republics and paupers on pavements measure out their lives with the act of swallowing drugs. There is not a man who has not been drugged once in his life. Drugs are to the modern man what manna is to gods.

Now-a-days people rush not so much to temples, churches and mosques, not to astrologers and palmists, not even to doctors as they run to the druggist. Why, even the doctor, dear reader, dispatches his patient with a chit, provided by the druggist, to the drug store. Before you cease your chatter describing your pains and sorrows, the doctor has thrust into your hand a scribbled prescription in Syble’s hand which the druggist alone can decipher. These drugs, alas, have reduced the doctor-patient relationship to exchanging currency notes with prescription papers. The personal touch is gone. You no longer can dream of your dear doctor bending double over you in examination.

Drugs have become a part of our menu. Tablets and capsules, tonics and potions take pride of place at breakfast tables, in lunch baskets and in dinner jackets. A mobile medical box travels with us even to picnic spots. Drugs are swallowed along with the dainty dishes and the delicacies as part of the menu. No eating ritual is complete without these drugs being consumed with relish and religious fervour. Man seems to live more on the drugs he gulps down his gullet than on the air he breathes. Drugs are carried up into space, down under the sea. They will eventually be carried into our graves. The ancient Egyptians must have taken their drugs into the tombs of the Pharaohs for fear their kings might need them even in death.

I love the drugs. I am not bothered about their chemical composition or the pharmaceutical formula. When I see them I feel like swallowing them in mouthfuls and drinking them to dregs. Their smoothness, their colour, their shape, their silky shine, all attract me. I feel that their manufacturers should be more imaginative in coating them in rainbow colours. They should be given more fanciful and poetic names, not simply ending in -dan, or -tan; -mycin or -mycitin. These endings are dull, drab and prosaic. They produce an ache in my head and nausea in my stomach. The names of these drugs must remind us of roses and violets, should give out the fragrance of jasmin and lavender, should be pink and purple. They should not be jam packed, cribbed and confined in a stiff thick wrappers but exhibited in large fibreglass transparent jars of pleasing tints as the multi colored peppermints are for our dear little ones.

I always look forward to a cold or a chill, a fever or something so that I can have my dear family doctor and my drugs by my bedside. When I am sick, my household is all concern for me and I enjoy it. Never am I treated with royal reverence more than when I am sick. My kith and kin, the near and dear ones, all take turns to keep a watch on me. The slightest movement or the faintest groan on my part makes them start and look heaven ward in prayer. I impatiently wait the self haralding honk of my doctor’s horn. When he arrives there is a sensible silence in the room. He asks me myriads of questions--untiringly, all familiar to me. I answer them all unhesitatingly with a smile. I soon feel his cold fingers all over my hot limbs, now pressing, now pushing, now tapping, now tickling and my entire being begins to toss on the soft waves of pleasurable sensations. I am happy for being sick. The longer my sickness the greater my joy. There is a pleasure in being a patient.

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