A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more even than the whole man - he must view the man in his world.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of understanding a patient in the context of their entire life and environment, not just their medical condition.
Harvey Cushingβs quote highlights the need for physicians to take a holistic approach when treating patients. Rather than merely focusing on the physical symptoms or the specific illness, doctors should consider the broader context of a patient's life, including their social circumstances and personal experiences. This perspective fosters a deeper understanding of health and well-being, recognizing that medical care is intertwined with a person's environment and individual world.
In practice
During a medical conference when discussing patient-centered care.
In these days when science is clearly in the saddle and when our knowledge of disease is advancing at a breathless pace, we are apt to forget that not all can ride and that he also serves who waits and who applies what the horseman discovers.
I would like to see the day when somebody would be appointed surgeon somewhere who had no hands, for the operative part is the least part of the work.
What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date.
I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.
The forms are evanescent; but the spirit, being in the Lord and of the Lord, is immortal and omnipresent.
The book, 'Citizen,' begins with daily encounters, little moments, places where language reveals how racism determines how we interact.
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