13 Week Medical School
Another group of medical researchers just determined that a high fat diet is NOT linked to a higher risk for cancer. I never know who to believe. Still, if I get sick, I’m happy it can be at this time in history. I’ve been reading about the history of medicine, and we don’t know how good we have it.
For example, the first physician was known as Imhotep. He lived in Egypt around 2725 B.C. The problem was he was also an army officer, a pyramid builder and an astrologer. I prefer a specialist. I don’t want the guy that is going to replace my heart tell me, “I’m also an eyeglass designer, software engineer and twice a week, I captain a tugboat.”
But a least Imhotep had medical skills. In ancient Rome anybody could call themselves a doctor. You just declared it so. “Hey, last week I was laying bricks on an aqueduct. But I took some career counseling and as of today, I’m a doctor.”
In pioneer days you might actually BE the doctor. If you were in the wilderness and broke something you had to operate on yourself. And your HMO still only covered 80 percent.
It still wasn’t much better than that during the Civil War. Then, medical school only lasted 13 weeks! It takes longer than that now to go to welding school. In the last two weeks, you did your internship and residency and then you bought a Porsche and began to talk down to nurses.
Actually, at some of the better schools during the Civil War, like Yale, medical school lasted 2 years, except that the second year was just a repeat of the first year. They figured if you didn’t get it the first time, you would the second. Hey, I wonder what will be on the test- THE SAME THING AS LAST YEAR, Einstein.
Experience was not needed. Most civil war doctors had never treated a gun shot wound or done surgery before the war. They learned as they went. Amputation was the most common battlefield surgery. ‘The OTHER leg, doc! The one with the big hole in it where the muzzle ball ripped through!”
Some soldiers were turned down for service because they didn’t have enough teeth to bite off the end of powder cartridges used to load the muzzle-loading rifles. I see people at the State Fair that couldn’t even get into the Confederate Army.
Of course, things were much better by the 1900’s, right? Well, consider that in 1920, it was common that your doctor was also your barber.
Say, doc, can you take out my appendix?
And, uh, give me a shave and haircut.
