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Post by Mr. Vitale on Jul 7, 2015 16:46:09 GMT
Write your responses to the essay "Becoming a Doctor" by responding to this thread.
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Post by Zoe Lambert on Jul 20, 2015 22:58:28 GMT
Write your responses to the essay "Becoming a Doctor" by responding to this thread. expanding and in the words of Thomas, a " dependable and enduring occupation " that is hard to imagine life in the future without. The author uses his medical background and own personal opinion to convince readers that the medical field still has a far way to grow and much more to discover. The medical field is full of ignorance, there is still plenty to learn and expand on and I believe that that is the point Thomas is trying to get across. He believes that today medicine is run by technology and that back in earlier times " the new lesson was that treating them made the outcome worse rather than better" due to little resource and no further knowledge. Today in the world we live in we are lucky to have the advances that we have because they save a lot of time and stress. Although the technology is mostly a good thing Thomas thinks there a few downsides to it. One thing he believes is that today due to the technology there is not enough patient doctor communication. The doctors don't need to have one on one talks as much as they use to with their patients because technology has it covered. Physicians in earlier days use to do a lot of non technology and it seemed to work. " They made diagnoses,explained matters to the patient and family, and then stood by, taking responsibility. The author feels that in our world today there isn't enough of that interaction. In short, Lewis Thomas's theme in his essay was that there is always room for expansion. Whether it be medicine or the world there is always room for better educating yourself and others. Medicine is such a unique profession because you never stop learning and that is why I'm drawn to it. The development of the medical field is something that will never stop and that is why becoming a doctor is such an honorable profession because you can always higher educate yourself. |
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Post by kadindonahue on Jul 31, 2015 3:44:15 GMT
As medicine improves and develops over the years people begin to take it for granted as they would with anything else. After reading "Becoming a Doctor" by Lewis Thomas I now realize that this is more than true. Lewis say in his essay, "The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or internee as the ceremonial dance of !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack." This tells me that we are not only forgetting the basics of medicine but completely walking over them. The influence of modern technology is killing the doctor to patient relationship as well as our understanding of diseases and I believe this is the point Lewis is trying to make.
Don't get me wrong technology has help save a lot of lives, but it has been relied on more heavily over the years. Someone today who is fresh out of medical school may not what to do if the power goes out due to the fact that there are no long any active machines to count on. Throughout this essay Lewis constantly reflects to the past and provides examples of the methods they used without technology being available. Lewis say, "they did a lot of non-technology, and it was immensely effective." Without technology today how would our doctors handle the situations that doctors in the past had to face. I believe that Lewis is trying to point out that doctors today should not rely so heavily on technology.
Lewis Thomas in "Becoming a Doctor" talks about the medical field in the past and compares to the modern version. I can say that after reading this essay I do agree with him. As helpful as technology is it has been taking away time from the patient to doctor conversations as well as the research into the understanding of diseases. This even applies to more than just the medical field. Whenever my family and I go out to dinner everybody is on their cell phones and nobody seems to notice what is going on. As sad as it is you still can't deny that technology is something that we can no longer live without.
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Post by mishellsanchez on Aug 1, 2015 2:45:09 GMT
In the essay, Becoming A Doctor, Lewis Thomas explains, to the reader, the importance and evolution of the occupations involving medicine. "Doctors, dressed up in one professional costume or another, have been in busy practice since the earliest records of every culture on earth. It is hard to think of a more dependable and enduring occupation, harder still to imagine any future events leading to its extinction." As the essay commences with this statement, Thomas's tone, one were he supports medical fields, is instantly set for the reader to clearly identify. To me, this essay rose above the others because I too have an itch towards the medical field. It is not something I have always had my mind on, but now as I am maturing and seeing how much suffering and pain some ill people really are, I have developed a want towards helping others, and I feel that the best way to achieve my goal is through a profession in the medical field. One of the purposes of this essay is to inform the reader on the innovation of the medical field, how it's been used longer than any other profession. For example, Thomas goes on to tell the reader about the death of George Washington. He says that the remedy for curing anything really was to remove excess fluid, wether it be opening a vein and drawing out pints of blood, or if that did not get the job done, then induced vomiting would be used. Washington came down with a fever and a sever sore through and pints of blood were drawn, this we know today would not be the way to cure a fever, but then Thomas goes on to say that as time passed, new studies were made. The same fever that ended the life of George Washington was later cured with bed rest, nutrition and observation. This was the beginning to the change in how many Americans looked at medicine. The innovation of medicine, as shown, has advanced from early on, and new ideas on how to change things for the better are constantly being made, with the simple utilization of observation and proposition, there have been drastic changes in the medical field.
Lewis Thomas made the purpose of his essay, being that the relevance of medicine and how it has greatly developed through these past centuries, quite prominent all the way from the opening sentence to the very conclusion. He used several examples of how it improved and how new ideas were made to to cure diseases to everyone's convenience. I feel that Thomas also tries to persuade the reader to have an interest in the medical profession. This coming from the diction used in his writing, words used such as dependable, enduring, miraculous, and energetic make the reader often feel drawn towards the profession because they too want to feel that they are dependable and miraculous. He tries to convince the reader by also saying that medicine if the future, and that as long as there are humans dyeing, there will be the need for medical assistance, and he is potentially correct in stating this.
Becoming A Doctor, conclusively, reaches its purpose to the intended audience. It is effective in showing several points that state why the medical field is crucial to the human race, and how refined it has become over the past years. To those like me, who have an interest in this field, this essay only enriches the desire to want to take part in this profession, it is a major part of the future. |
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tonyg
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Post by tonyg on Aug 1, 2015 3:33:54 GMT
Lewis Thomas' essay, "Becoming a Doctor" makes me really start to appreciate the time period we are so fortunate to live in. When I read about the treatments patients received for their ailments it made me uneasy. To think about living in a time period where the treatment for the common cold is to draw blood until the patient passed out is a scary thing. Also a treatment for a sore throat was to gargle honey and vinegar or have a beetle crawl in your throat. Even the time when doctors some illnesses would go away on their own with time is unnerving. Doctors told their patients that the disease they had gave them a 70 percent chance of survival, and they just had to deal with it and see what happens. That's almost worse then draining blood. At least when you have your blood taken you think that it is helping you.
I disagree with Thomas' statement that technology is disconnecting doctors from patients. I think doctors engage with their patients the same amount, except instead of writing information down on a piece of paper on a clipboard they type it into a computer. I think technology does not take away from doctor to patient interactions. I think that the advances that have been made in the field of medicine is remarkable. These new technologies can greatly improve the lives of patients. Medical engineering has allowed for the construction of new limbs and even some organs. The advancement of technology in the medical field is a major improvement to the profession.
Thomas also argues that the use of technology reduces the amount of actual medical knowledge that doctors need to know. While this may be true, does it really matter whether you are getting patched up by the doctor that knows what to do to get you better, or the doctor that follows instructions on an iPad. Sure everyone would prefer to have the doctor that knows everything, but if you are getting the same treatment from both does it even matter which one you get? Overall, technology has certainly helped the medical field more than it has hurt it.
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Post by marissakane on Aug 31, 2015 2:51:27 GMT
"Becoming A Doctor" I personally thought was an essay written on a topic that addresses my mind constantly while in a scientific environment. The topic was that doctors are always going to be needed and also about many mistakes doctors have made in history and continue to make. This profession is so fixed in the way that there will always need to be doctors employed, yet the field is fluctuating because scientific theories are always changing and becoming more true as research continues. It is crazy to think about how science is something your life can depend on, yet it can not be a hundred percent right all the time.
Science is not something that interests me in particular because the field seems to just be a mixture of language and math which is confusing because math is so cut and dry, yet language is ever changing. Although they are so different you do use math in some aspects of language and you do use language skills in aspects of math so essentially they balance each other out; which is why science works in the world. It is truly a difficult field to work in because if you are a scientist you have to go into research and labs knowing that your ideas and theories could change and be proven wrong and with much criticism.
There was a quote in this essay that said, "It is only fear of pain and death, and a reckless search for cures, which blinds us." This quote supports my idea that science is built upon the mixture of logical thinking and emotional thinking. Without the human fear of dying from a disease or injury there would be no reason for medicine which can be created through scientific and mathematical processes. It is interesting to think about because the author brought up the fact that most of the diseases in the 1900's that killed mass amounts of people could be treated theuriputically without medicines. It makes me wonder if in modern times we have gotten too comfortable with numbing pains and prescribing medicines when they could have been treated easier by just letting the disease run its course.
Aside from the theories of theuriputic healing, there are some "biological puzzles" like Alzheimer's, cancer, AIDS, and much more which cannot be treated with bed rest and time. No matter how healthy you are, and how good you take care of your body and are careful not to put toxins into it; you can develop these serious and deadly diseases. There are multiple studies on them, but none can seem to break the barrier into the actual cause and reversal of the disease. It must be frustrating for people who have put years of their life into these studies and especially when there are multiple conspiracy theories on why we still have not found cures. When these cures are known to the human race, and I hope that will be in my lifetime, there will be a change in the scientific field and the world we know today.
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kass
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Post by kass on Sept 1, 2015 2:36:18 GMT
"Becoming a Doctor" by Lewis Thomas, talks all about illness, disease, medicine, and trying to find cures. The cure to cancer is what we all seek and cannot wait for it to be discovered, but we will need to work much harder. Lewis Thomas stated in, "Becoming a Doctor" that we need more research in disease if we ever want to find the cures for everything. He also stated that we need more room for all of the medical ignorance. Young researchers new to the field are all ready to start discovering new cures, new medications, and anything else they wish to find. Curing and Preventing are the main two goals for everyone in the medical field. They first of course are trying their best with prevention, but sometimes that is not enough. When prevention fails all you can depend on is the cure to get better.
Lewis Thomas talks all about the eighteenth and nineteenth century medical issues and treatments. It also states that doctors will continue to exist as long as illness does, which they believe will mean forever. Lewis talks about a book with five authors from the faculties of Harvard, Columbia. and Jefferson Medical College. The last sentence in the book is, "It is better to have a future than a past." This really stood out to me because it made me think more into it. With medicine and treatment you have a better chance of having a future, if left untreated medically and trying to home treat yourself you may only have your past. Back in the eighteenth century they had all sorts of weird "treatments" such as if you had a cold, they would draw pints of blood from you, enough till you passed out. They also would have a beetle crawl down your throat to help treat a sore throat. I personally am very appreciative to live in a world with cough drops because i would never let a beetle crawl down my throat! Some people never believed in medicine and treatments, and so they tried fighting it off alone, by sitting in a dark room for a few days, some people still today do not believe in medicine. I have a family member that refuses to take prescriptions because she says they're full of harsh chemicals that will only harm her body, and she is very healthy.
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Post by Katie Mayer on Sept 1, 2015 4:04:01 GMT
In Lewis Thomas' "Becoming a Doctor", I find it very interesting the fact that he sees technology as a disconnect between the doctor and their patient. I find this so strange because he goes on about how far medicine has come, Thomas' description of how medicine was practiced not even that long ago is enough to make the reader cringe. He has a very futuristic outlook on the medical world and sees only improvement however to me improvement is only going to come with more technology. i can understand the fact that bedside manor may have decreased however technology has brought us on the brink of many new cures. Many mistakes have been made in the medical world and he highlights them to make it clear that medicine is a very risky thing. i enjoyed reading this not only for the gain of knowledge and information but as well as seeing how i could agree with him on a topic and see how our opinions branched off to form a separate one.
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