Healthcare
As an auditor, I attended a university class last year called The History of Healthcare. I find I have a couple of observations to share.
The first is very positive, the students (and the auditors) had talks with each other before class started. This is an upper-level class (300 level) so most of the students are upper class students. I’d say about 1/2 of the students are psychology majors, 1/4 are nursing majors and 1/4 are history majors (there are 5 auditors). I think I’ve mentioned that in the other classes I’ve audited, the students all come into class with their faces glued to their phone.
The second observation happened one day. We were talking about the time from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, a time of many medical improvements. One of the articles was about Dr. Sim, the father of gynecology. Dr. Sim, as I understand it, is mentioned in a lot of history books, has his portrait hung in many medical schools and has several statues of him celebrating his medical contributions.
Dr. Sim was a doctor in the Deep South right before the civil war. He developed a surgical technique to fix a fistula that sometimes occurs after childbirth. The article describes how he developed his surgical technique by experimenting on 3 slave women.
One of the students, in class, emphasized how he experimented on slave women making him despicable. During the class, the professor showed a picture of his statue being removed at some medical college in NY. I knew, from the article, that even though the women were slaves, they all consented to have Dr. Sim try out his proposed surgical correction on them due to the pain and discomfort of their condition. In fact, Dr. Sim performed 30 surgical attempts at fixing it before he was successful on one woman during a time when anesthesia was just starting to be introduced (and probably not in antebellum Alabama).
After class, I spoke with the professor about the divergence of opinion of Dr. Sim (my opinion is that he was no different than other surgical innovators at the time). The professor, in my opinion, tried to play devil’s advocate to my comments. At one point, I made the comment that Dr. Sim didn’t do anything despicable enough to warrant the removal of his statue. The professor replied that she thought that statues themselves were a problem in that every historical person has questionable aspects to their personality. I agreed wholeheartedly.
This is the danger of putting anyone up on a pedestal. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about Dr. Sim or Thomas Jefferson (owned slaves) or Madonna (publicly suggested people blow up the White House). None of us is perfect. Maybe that is the lesson…
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” - Romans 3:23
“Both we and our fathers have sinned; we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness.” - Psalm 106:6
“The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!” - Lamentations 5:16
“…in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” - Ephesians 2:2-10
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” - John 3:16-21
