Medically speaking

“It is generally assumed that doctors take a professional view of suffering and that the process of professional insulation begins in their second year as medical students when they first start dissecting the human body …. Later, other factors are an aid to their self-protection. Doctors use a second, technical, entirely unemotional language …. Increasing specialization encourages an increasingly scientific view of illness. (In the eighteenth century and earlier the doctor was often thought of as a cynic: a cynic is by definition a man who assumes a scientific objectivity to which he has no claim.)”1 — A Fortunate Man, John Berger “Torment, a canonical subject in art, is often represented in painting as a spectacle, something being watched (or ignored) by other people. The implication is: no, it cannot be stopped — and the mingling of inattentive with attentive onlookers underscores this” (page 42).2 — Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag “We are all involved with humankind but we mostly do our best not to know it.”3 — Recognizing suffering, Eric Cassell