A life in medicine is a balancing act-sometimes a difficult one-to “balance” the science and fact-base that physicians use as the “tools of their trade” with the human weave that can make the lives of humans rich, rewarding, and at times mysterious.

Robertson Davies once told an audience at Johns Hopkins University that the “balance” the physician must seek was between Knowledge—that which is acquired and is “external”—and Wisdom—that which is internal—and makes the physician “look not at the disease, but at the bearer of the disease…

Wisdom is what creates the link that united the healer with the patient, and the exercise of which makes him a true physician, a true healer…. It is Wisdom that tells the physician how to make the patient a partner in his own cure. Instead of calling them Knowledge and Wisdom, let us call them Science and Humanism.”

Dalhousie’s own Dr. Jock Murray, former Dean of the medical school and founder of our Humanities Program, quoted Dr. Davies as he discussed the importance of the Humanities to the philosophy at Dal Medicine [Why the Medical Humanities? Dalhousie Medical Journal, 1998; 26 (1): 46-50]

"We agree with Robertson Davies and believe that there has to be a balance between the sciences and humanities in medicine.

Both aspects are integral to medicine and we must strive to bind them and integrate them, not suggest one is important to the exclusion of the other, or that they operate separately."