Ryan MacDougall is a member of the Class of 2007 and a graduate
of St. F X. His Humanities-supported project is to investigate the
effect of globalization on health care systems, and is an extension
of his Med II elective. He travelled to Geneva to interview staff
and advisors of the World Trade and World Health Organisation. He
also presented a report of his elective to a conference in the Netherlands
held in June.
Learn more about my project in medical humanities by clicking my picture above.
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]
