Lown RCTs (Random Clinical Thoughts): Memories of pain beyond the power of healing
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Lown RCTs (Random Clinical Thoughts): Memories of pain beyond the power of healing (37K) [description] [download]
Whenever I read of an Iraqi war veteran's suicide or of a soldier afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder, I feel a frisson of anguish. My emotional reaction may be due to the many Holocaust victims whom I have doctored. They have taught me that some remembrances of pain and savagery are so deep and tautly embedded that the passage of time can only dilute, not purge.
One memory that frequently surfaces and fills me with desolation does not concern a Holocaust victim. This singular memory I wish to extirpate, but it leaves me helpless. My tormentor is a small, elderly housewife who was never a victim of Auschwitz, Buchenwald or the other charnel places of horror that had pockmarked Europe. This event happened so long ago that I have forgotten much else of that time.
The event I am about to relate occurred 61 years ago. The place was the Montefiore Hospital in New York City, where I was a medical resident. The hospital was then the city's leading institution for the treatment of chronic disease, with its mostly elderly patients suffering from multiple intractable problems. Jack K., the intern working at the time on my service, was heavyset, ponderous, uninterested, and invariably complaining of indigestion. More annoying was his contempt for these elderly patients. He was impatient to complete the "stinking" internship and get on with his life's commitment to psychiatry./.../
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