NATIONAL DOCTOR'S DAY: Only a fundamentally good human being is also a good doctor

Once, someone asked Bidhan Chandra Roy, a legendary medical practitioner, what qualities of a good doctor should be. Roy said, "Much more important than a doctor's degree, he or she should have an angler's patience , empathy , discernment and compassion." To honour his birth and death anniversaries, July 1 is commemorated as Doctors' Day in India. " A doctor is an angel on earth," said the Greek physician and philosopher Hippocrates of Kos many centuries ago. Despite changing ethos, ethics and earnings with the passage of time, a doctor is still the most venerable figure across the globe and is seen as the saviour by the masses. What Dr Roy said about a medico is actually a metaphor; metaphor for being human because the qualities, viz, patience, empathy, discernment and compassion enshrined in a doctor are also the qualities of being a good human. In other words, a doctor is considered a noble individual. The constituents of the character of a lofty human are indeed patience, empathy, discernment and compassion. All these sublime aspects of an individual are actually interlinked. Patience and empathy go hand in hand.

When you've patience, you discern people, situations and circumstances with a sense of discernment and compassion. That leads to empathy when you feel and discern the pains and sufferings of others as your own. The distillation of all these qualities may be expected of a doctor but these virtues are also expected of every individual who's sensitive and sensible. When empathy and compassion come together, you relate to everyone sans an iota of prejudice. It creates an exalted perception that the whole world is my home and all creatures, not just humans, are related to me.

A doctor saves life without ever thinking whether he's saving the life of a friend or an enemy. All are the same to him. We must imbibe this spirit of universal empathy from the doctors. When the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was incarcerated at St Helena, one of the most isolated places on earth, the Brits appointed an Irish surgeon for him. His name was Barry Edward O'Meara. In fact, O'Meara accompanied Napoleon to St Helena and became his physician. In his book ' Napoleon's Doctor,' Hubert O'Connor wrote that one day, Napoleon asked the doctor, "Being a doctor, it's quite easy for you to take my life." The young Dublin doctor replied, "Let the Brits do that. I'm here for your service and my only objective is to save your life." Yes, the sole, as well as the soul, objective of a doctor is to save the life of his/her patients. Every patient is equally dear to him/her. Famous English novelist William Somerset Maugham, a doctor who never practised, rightly said, " Only a fundamentally good human being is also a good doctor. Since I didn't consider myself to be a very good human, I never practised and wrote novels instead." Take a bow, doctors.