What's a woman doing in a place like this?

Medicine is not a science. It is an art that uses science to explore what William Harvey called "nature's closest secrets," that we may better minister to her children. We still need to remove some crackpot theories that have crept in, such as "holism." Even neurosurgery has a few. But we are beginning to humanize the traditional detached indifference and become the doctors we were meant to be. Our patients will be better for it. Society will be better for it. We will be better for it [1320]. In discussing the women's liberation movement in America, Reverend William Sloan Coffin once stated, "The woman who most needs liberating is the woman who lives inside of each man." This, I think, is the great awakening that the increasing influence of female physicians has brought about. Early twentieth century physicians, armed with a new science, became efficient fighters of disease. Disease was the enemy, the cure was the victory, and the patient was too often merely the environment in which the encounter was fought. This is what was taught in medical school and residency. It was necessary to learn the lesson well in order to be protected against the pain of others and to abort any insidious tendency to identify with their misery. Many teachers believed in preventing the enervating perils of "emotional involvement." This is not to say that physicians were unkind to their patients, merely that they kept their distance. Patients were treated with respect and even with a kind of formalized dignity. Physicians were as gentle as they knew how to be. But they were men apart. They towered over the sick as an adult towers over a child. Today something within men is being liberated. To a great extent, I believe that women physicians have been essential in bringing this change to medicine. We now know that physicians are not compromised by allowing themselves to feel some of what their patients feel. They are strengthened by it. A patient's life, the setting of his illness, the rending of his soul, the anguish of his family and the hope for his recovery have all become as much a part of good care as knowledge of the serum sodium and what to do about it. Men have become better nurturers, more empathetic. And the thing that is being liberated from inside men is something that society has always seen as a feminine quality. The peak of the healer's art is in bringing both science and empathy to bear on disease. This is what being a physician should mean.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)