Memoirs of a Woman Doctor Read Online Free PDF Page B

reason, since I was about to leave it all behind and begin afresh, start from the cradle of life, with the primitive flat land which yielded crops with spontaneous benevolence; with virgin nature which had covered the earth for millions of years; with the simple country people who ate the fruits of the earth and followed their instincts under a canopy of trees, and ate, drank, bore children, sickened and died without ever asking how or why.
    I smiled, then laughed out loud so that I could hear myself laughing. My mother had always told me that a girl shouldn’t laugh loud enough for people to hear, so my laughter had always faded on my lips before it made a sound. I opened my mouth as wide as it would go and laughed and snorted and the air flooded into my chest — pure, clean air free of smoke and carbon monoxide… and free of medical science and all the refinements of society. The composition of this air didn’t concern me; I just knew that it was refreshing and cooled my overheated insides. I abandoned myself to the sun’s rays and let them fall on my body — pure, clean rays unspoilt by scientific analyses of their properties, whether harmful or beneficial.
    A simple, good-natured countryman brought me a tray of food: flat bread, cream, butter and eggs. I ate with a zest that I hadn’t felt since I was a small child of under nine. I forgot my mother’s instructions about how a girl should eat, and the medical profession’s warnings about butter and cream, and stuffed my mouth with food. I drank cold water from an earthenware jug, making a loud noise and spilling water all down my clothes. I ate till my hunger was satisfied and drank till my thirst was quenched. The couch was scorching hot by now so I went and stretched out on the cool damp earth. I rested my face against it, drawing into me the smell that came from deep inside, and exulting in the sensation of belonging to it and being a part of it.
    A gentle breeze lifted my skirt up over my thighs but I felt none of the alarm that I would have done in the past whenever my thighs were uncovered. How had my mother managed to instil in me this notion that my body was somehow shameful? Man was born naked and he died naked. All his clothes were a mere pretence, an attempt to cover up his true nature.
    As I let the breeze lift up my clothes, I felt that I had been reborn, and that only at the instant of this rebirth had my emotional life properly come into being. But although newborn, it was a mighty giant, wanting to live… indeed, demanding its right to live.

    I was woken in the middle of the night by the sound of heavy knocking at the door. I looked out and saw a sick old man supported by a group of peasants. I let them in, put on my white coat and sounded the sick man’s chest. The sound of his heartbeats was mixed with the sound of groaning and I raised my eyes to look at him. His eyes were fixed desperately on me like a drowning man staring at a lifebelt just out of his reach. It was as if I had suddenly forgotten all knowledge and had never examined a patient before. For the first time I was really seeing the eyes of a person suffering and hearing the sound of his groans.
    How had I been able to examine patients in the past? How had my teachers led me to believe that a sick person was nothing more than a liver, a spleen or a collection of guts and entrails? How had they made me look into people’s eyes, shine my light into them, turn up the lids with my fingers, without noticing their freshness and innocence? How had they made me look down people’s throats without hearing their cries of pain?
    I shuddered. For the first time in my life I was seeing the patient as a whole person, not a loose assemblage of discrete parts. The weariness and sickness of the old man’s eyes were getting through to me and his cries were crossing the gap between my ears and my heart.
    I stood at a loss before my patient, my eyes firmly on his, my ears straining to pick up his