Doctor Curmudgeon®: Common Sense…Why Hast Thou Deserted Us?

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By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAFP

As is often my wont, I thumb through the pages of my great-great (something like that) Grandmother’s journal.

Although it was written in the days when she was a physician and covered for Dr. Watson in the treatment of Sherlock Holmes, there is so much wisdom to be found.

She had no Disease Modifying drugs, no CTs, no MRIS, no sophisticated lab studies at her disposal, but what a wise woman!

Doctor Cranky Wangshaw-Vesalius-Steinberger…one of the most eminent physicians of her era.
How wonderful to be in possession of her journal. She recorded her thoughts throughout the day, as she saw patients and as she observed the world around her.

There was common sense in what she did.

If a formerly well groomed patient looked untidy, she knew something was wrong, even though the patient insisted that he was feeling well. She watched the patient, listened to her patient and examined that patient. To her, this was common sense. Her patient’s dishabille could be an illness, possibly some severe fatigue which rendered it difficult for him to perform normal grooming; or something on his mind; perhaps a personal tragedy or worry.

Why would you try to bleed someone whose skin looked dry? Why lose more vital fluid? This made no sense to this Victorian physician.

If a patient was fat, she would call it like it is. She would write the word ‘fat” in his notes.

She was not concerned with being “politically correct.” The term did not exist in her era. But as Doctor Cranky has commented to me in one of her late night visitations: “A Pox on political correctness!”

She was among the first physicians to use anesthesia, because it was just common sense that a patient asleep and not writhing in agony would allow for more careful technique and, would recover more quickly with less complications

To her, it was common sense that food and water and unsanitary conditions could breed disease. She realized that disease was not spread by “miasmas,” (night air) but it was common sense to believe that polluted water could spread illness.

Common sense was going down the drain years ago when such things as “social promotions” appeared in schools. If a child needs more tutoring, it is well worth it, but it does not help the child to be promoted where he/she can become further behind and more frustrated.

If children were not paying attention in class, because their attention was fixed on their cell phones, Grandma Doctor Cranky would have used her common sense and had them confiscated by the teacher and returned at the end of the school day.

Doctor Cranky, modern medicine would hold you in its thrall, but all of our political correctness would cause your anger to overflow as you shook your fist

It seems that today, Voltaire would have repeated, “Common sense is not so common.”

And Will Rogers would have added, “Common sense ain’t so common.”

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.

SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”

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