Letter to an Aspiring Doctor - Theodore Dalrymple
Letter to an Aspiring Doctor Theodore Dalrymple Y ou tell me you are thinking, my dear Stephen, of medicine as a career, but you wonder whether you have the ability or the temperament for it. You say that you have wanted to be a doctor ever since your family practitioner visited you at home as a child when you had severe tonsillitis. He seemed a hero to you then, and you would like to emulate him. I do not want to discourage you, of course, but the kind of doctor who visits patients in their homes was not common even then (you were lucky) and is even rarer today. If you are to avoid disappointment or bitterness, you should have a clear picture of what modern medicine really entails before committing yourself to it. Medicine is a broad church, and the kind of person it requires is therefore very varied. Provided you have the requisite determination and intelligence, which I do not doubt, you need not worry too much about your temperament: There is a branch of medicine to su...