Students told of medicine sociology
Sir — In recent times, there have been many complaints regarding the huge fees charged by members of the medical, pseudo, and quasi-medical, professions.
Like Bobby Darin and Billy Fury, I contracted rheumatic fever in my teens but unlike those famous singers, who died a few years after open-heart surgery, I have survived that kind of operation by decades.
When I was taken to St Columcille’s Hospital, in Loughlinstown, Co Dublin, in February 2002 with a respiratory infection, a group of students came to see me because I had received an aorta valve replacement in July 1977.
Individually, and in twos and threes, they came to examine me, until I was exhausted; and yet, as a former teacher, I endured this torture knowing that the study of my condition might save lives. One student, a native of India, wrote a brief sketch of my medical history for her thesis.
The day before my discharge, the entire group assembled to ask me further questions, and to answer mine. Recalling my impoverished youth, caused by chronic illness, I decided to educate these sons and daughters of wealthy people, regarding the sociological aspects of medicine. They reacted by asking me, and each other, “What is the sociology of medicine?” I explained to them what it is and gave them an idea of the financial effects that chronic illness had imposed upon my life during my late teens and early twenties, when I earned less than £3, in what was then a job-starved country.
They were not alone sympathetic to, but appalled by, this brief sketch of the financial and related hardships I had endured over those years. It was my hope that when qualified to practise medicine, they would reflect upon what I had told them, and be compelled to give special consideration to their future patients’ social conditions...
I admonished them as follows: “After you graduate, and become consultants, remember that patients who have suffered with prolonged illness or who are suffering from chronic illness are invariably poor, because not alone have they to bear medical expenses, they are unable to earn decent incomes; therefore, do not send them huge bills.”
The group seemed perplexed, until one of its members, a wit, consoled me, saying: “Don’t worry, Mr MacCarron, we’ll send you small bills!” Daniel MacCarron, Westfield Park,
Bray, Co Wicklow