Like father, like son
Though highly respected through the ages, doctors did little to earn it. Their standard treatment of patients, whatever their complaint, was to bleed them and give them physics. Then say that whether or not they recovered was in God’s hands. Barbers performed surgery.
Medicines were foul concoctions and tasted vile. The sick were quarantined behind closed shutters to prevent the miasma of fresh air. Midwives with dirty hands delivered babies. A bath twice a year for the family in the same water was considered enough. Toilets were piss-pots, emptied out the door.
Hippocrates was regarded as the greatest physician of ancient times, yet his cures didn’t cure. Shamans voiced mysterious incantations, to no effect. The Dark Ages, Middle Ages and Renaissance were no better. The Bubonic plague was blamed on the Devil.
Medical improvements were made in the 18th and 19th centuries. Women were allowed to be nurses, but not doctors (Florence Nightingale was horrified at the suggestion). Still, progress couldn’t be halted. Women doctors arrived in the 20th and 21st centuries. Pharmaceutical companies flourished. As did bathrooms.
Alas, the medical profession couldn’t save all patients. Far from it. Doctors, men and especially women, became discouraged, felt guilty. The suicide rate is highest of that in all professions. Which is the main plot of Pulse by Felix Francis, the son of ace Brit jockey-turned-author Dick Francis.
Emergency specialist Dr Christine Rankin has fallen into depression. It affects her work. Will she pull out of it? Reading it for hundreds of pages is a downer. The other plot is about cocaine and dirty work at the racetrack, which Chris learns about.
The perpetrators are on to her. So if she doesn’t die by her own hand, she’ll be murdered by theirs.
Racing fans dote on the Francis father and son’s thrillers. Non-racetrack fans may not be so enthused. Best is the medicalese descriptions of horses and human treatments of their ailments.