TIL: Stereognosis is the ability to perceive a three dimensional object by touch, without the aid of the other senses.
Postage stamps in England do not specify what country they are from. This may seem like an unusual fact to pick up in medical school but, as usual for our history of medicine lectures, it was in service of a larger and more pertinent point. The topic of stamps came up while examining a stampless letter from 1840s Mississippi. The letter was a bill for services done by a doctor for the property of a plantation owner.
Our chancellor has taken pains to avoid teaching only the history of the white male heroes of medicine. Some of this profession's history is less heroic than we'd like to remember, and we should try to learn from the failings of our past to minimize their inevitable repetition in the future. The example at hand was of the role doctors played in the slave trade and slavery in the American South. It is an example of the phrase made famous by Hannah Arendt when describing lower level Nazi administrators: the banality of evil. The majority of evil done in the world is not done by sociopathic masterminds, but by normal people just doing their job and perpetuating the status quo.
But what can a doctor do to protest? We have (or will have) taken an oath to treat the sick. To refuse to work for slaveholders is to damn the slaves to pain and death, but keeping the slaves healthy allows the system to continue. How is this relevant to us today? Doctors stand on the sidelines of every football game, giving players and fans a sense of security that everyone will be ok, because there are medical staff around. But studies keep showing that football does irreparable damage to nearly everyone who plays. Is the medical profession allowing an unethically dangerous activity to go on out of tradition?*
I welcome your thoughts! Feel free to comment below.
*I have a rebuttal to the argument that football is a choice, but don't feel like getting into it tonight, but comment and I will.
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