With this thought provoking comment from TJN below the story.
One eye-opener for me in all this is how dumb many doctors actually appear to be. I say dumb – they are presumably very good at learning by rote long lists of diseases, symptoms, and drugs to ‘treat’ those symptoms with – but are actually useless at critical thinking. It’s as if the most important thing they drum into students at medical school is unquestioning deference to authority.
Perhaps they teach that at undertaker school too. Pardon my excessive cynicism.
The mind is an unexplored country. 
Indeed. I have personally known one or two doctors who were terrible diagnosticians, precisely because they didn’t know how to think critically.
And I have known some who were positively idiotic when it came to business ventures. One doctor in my home town tried to interest my father in investing in a Jimmy Carter theme park in Georgia (since the “theme” would have to have been “failure on a monumental scale”, I can’t see anybody getting on the roller coaster). Another time, during the same Jimmy Carter’s mismanagement of the oil crisis, which resulted in long lines at service stations, this doctor floated the idea of people putting their resources together and filling a couple of swimming pools with gasoline.
By: Paco on September 20, 2022
at 12:22 AM
In my best Foghorn Leghorn voice:
I tell you, that boy wouldn’t know which end of a scalpel to hold!
By: Gregoryno6 on September 20, 2022
at 7:22 AM
Kings Row (1942) is one of my favourite movies, with a bit of everything and a powerful commentary on the medical profession, even if the particulars are out of date.
By: bruce on September 20, 2022
at 6:28 AM
Thanks, I’ll have a look for that.
By: Gregoryno6 on September 20, 2022
at 7:22 AM
You haven’t seen it? Oh well it’s a bit weird and not on most favourite lists, you’ll see why, like three totally different movies spliced together with a Star Wars soundtrack. And it sure hates doctors, as they used to be a century ago anyway.
https://archive.org/details/kingsrow
I’m still stunned by Paco’s story about the guy who thought it’d be ok to store gasoline in swimming pools.
By: bruce on September 20, 2022
at 2:11 PM
Thanks again, Bruce. I read the Wikipedia plot summary and it didn’t sound familiar – but I did pick up on the anti-doctor theme.
By: Gregoryno6 on September 20, 2022
at 3:24 PM
I’m pretty sure the good doctor was never able to generate any interest in his gasoline reserve scheme.
By: Paco on September 21, 2022
at 8:34 PM