The Good Old Days

One of most unfortunate things about being a surgeon is that one is often forced to read things written by surgeons. Surgeons' writing is pretty universally terrible. These are people, remember, who have learned almost everything they know from one another, and the vast majority of them last wrote non-science in high school. There are exceptions, of course...Atul Gawande, whom I don't agree with on a lot of things, at least writes about those things with real skill.

Nowhere is surgical writing more likely to make me want to strangle myself than in the editorial section of the many cheap journals sent to me each week as vehicles for pharmaceutical and device advertising. One of the worst is "Surgical Rounds," whose editor, Bernie Jaffe, is sort of an archetype of the disaffected modern older surgeon. Almost every one of his editorials makes spurious arguments for a return to the Good Old Days of surgery...days that have not, in fact, ever existed. But that doesn't stop him from pining for a time when residents properly lived in their hospitals, he was paid millions of dollars a year and couldn't walk down a street without people bursting into applause at his passing, and insurance companies didn't give him any guff. Almost every one is enough to set me drafting resignation letters.

But this most recent one really goes beyond the pale. Bernie's given up on wishing for the happy days of the 1960s. Now, he's advocating a return to the real pinnacle of surgery, medicine, and society in general: Italy in the 1660s!

Yes, those were banner days. Fie on the so-called "progress" of the past 400 years!


JEK
Can't believe this isn't a joke, but is certain this isn't a joke.