The older editions of Harrison's Medicine had these words in the first chapter, “To the physician, as to the anthropologist, nothing human is strange or repulsive. The misanthrope may become a smart diagnostician of organic disease, but can scarcely hope to succeed as a physician. The true physician has a Shakespearean breadth of interest in the wise and the foolish, the proud and the humble, the stoic hero and the whining rogue. [The physician] cares for people.”[1] No definition can sum up empathy better.
One wonders why recent editions of this medical classic do not carry this profound statement highlighting healing beyond curing. An editorial illustrates how Shakespeare vividly describes insomnia on par with present understanding of sleep medicine.[2] Perhaps, no medical student today has the time or inclination to read the Bard or other literature. In the pre-antibiotic era,…
