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My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Wonderful
Visualize
Feeling
Exam
Often
Physicians
Sense
Ritual
Feelings
Leaves
Body
Waste
May
Inside
Time
Technology
Shortchange

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We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
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Another day in paradise' was his inevitable pronouncement when he settled his head on his pillow. Now I understand what that meant: the uneventful day was a precious gift.
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There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-
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There are moments as a teacher when I'm conscious that I'm trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago. It's an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.
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The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
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Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?... Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223... And pray, why would this number interest us? It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, 'One zero, two ones, three twos, two threes'.
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I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
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The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.
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What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve empathy can be replaced by cynicism.
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In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'
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For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information. It seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight, if it does nothing else, allows one the opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers.
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