The Knife Richard Selzer Summary

Almond faced many long, cold nights as a traveling doctor in the mountains of West Virginia. He would travel lengthy routes to get to his patients in his little rag top jeep. There would even be times when he would have to get out of his jeep and walk, or row to the patients home. Dr. Almond would receive frantic calls from families in the middle of the night, and he’d spring out of bed to try to get there as fast as he could. Doctors who did house calls get little rest; they had worked all day and then got up in the middle of the night to go help a patient. “Just as one day has ended, another one has begun. And thus it goes, day in, day out, for many of our friends who earned the title “Doctor”, and all that word portends.”

Richard Selzer's "The Knife," was an extremely fascinating perused that I wasn't expecting or prepared for. The title itself radiates the sort of vibe you feel like if tuning in to a vile slaughater story. Shockingly this story wasn't about murder yet about a surgery on a patient. The general mind-set of the story was an extremely dull, alarming, and unpalatable inclination that influenced me to feel at most circumstances truly awkward. I was dependably in tension all through the read. The author utilizes extremely definite and expressive approaches to describe the activity or occasion unfurling before us. At to start with, I imagined that the essayist was insane and somewhat mental with the way he depicted the surgery, yet then I contemplated

In the “Surgeon as Priest,” Richard Selzer dives into the religious and scientific aspects of being a surgeon. He explores and divides the certain aspects of “healing” into five parts, each section demonstrating the different perspectives on healing (spiritually & scientifically) that eventually builds the metaphorical bridge between surgeon and priest. With the use of figurative language and other rhetorical devises, he connects each section of his essay to show his transformation from a scientific healer to a spiritual healer.

Prominently featured in the mission statements of virtually of every medical school and medical institution in the world is the call for empathetic doctors. These institutions wish to train medical professionals that possess qualities of sympathy and compassion, and hospitals wish to employ health professionals that showcase similar qualities. The reality, however, is starkly different, as physicians, jaded by what they have seen in the medical world, lose the qualities that drove them to medicine in the first place. In Frank Huyler’s “The Blood of Strangers,” a collection of short stories from his time as a physician in the emergency room, Huyler uses the literary techniques of irony and imagery to depict the reality of the world of a medical professional. While Huyler provides several examples of both techniques in his accounts, moments from “A Difference of Opinion” and “The Secret” in particular stand out. Huyler uses irony and imagery in these two pieces to describe how medical professionals have lost their sense of compassion and empathy due to being jaded and desensitized by the awful incidents they have witnessed during their careers.

In his Wall Street Journal essay, “Violence Vanquished,” Steven Pinker claims that contrary to perceived notions of increasing violence and turbulence in the world, "brutality is declining and empathy is on the rise.” Pinker establishes this argument through numeric comparisons of death tolls, genocides and other aggressive perpetrations in modern society with those in prehistoric times. He credits the fall in these quantifications of “violence” to the processes of pacification, civilization, humanitarian revolution, Long Peace, New Peace and the rights revolution that have together created an environment conducive to “our better angels.”

The rhetorical device that is most relevant in The Pen and the Scalpel by Dr. Richard Selzer, is developing a voice. The two main ideas of the essay are married in the sixth paragraph. This short yet powerful paragraph brings the essay into a full circle, the essay is about how it is a struggle for a surgeon to also be a writer. The sixth paragraph begins with explaining how the art of writing and how surgery do not relate. As it progresses he uses great figurative language to compare, what is almost incomparable. He starts by calling them “celestial arts”. Celestial arts are divine and heavenly, their roots are traced back to the Greek gods. This insinuation shows the reader that there are few arts that relate as closely as these two do.

A Steward’s job entailed dealing with minor injuries such as scrapes, bumps, and cuts not deep enough for surgical interaction. On the occasion, they would pull teeth and distribute medicine to the soldiers who needed help with pain management. If the Steward completed his duties in a good fashion, he would be allowed to step in and help with more serious cases such as amputations in hope that one day he would become a qualified surgeon. Since amputations were performed so frequently, it did not take much time in order to become qualified. These short “internships” through the Civil War proved to be ineffective as surgeons lacked knowledge in all aspects of the medical field.

1. Dr. Gawande explains that in his training as a surgeon, he has struggled with the fear of not being able to fix a problem for a patient, even when he knows the odds are not good. If you were Dr. Gawande’s patient, what would you like him to know about your hopes for how he would handle a difficult situation like this?

Dr. Vincent Lam is a profound Canadian physician and writer. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is his award winning novel that speaks on the reality of what it’s actually like to be in medical school aiming to be apart of a medical profession and the difficult expectations students must face while still managing to stay sane during those challenging years of their lives. It’s a collection of short stories partly based off of his experiences in the medical field, following the lives of fictional characters Ming, Fitzgerald, Chen, and Sri as they endure medical school and later work as doctors. Dr. Lam does a remarkable job at incorporating unique and compelling characters with intriguing storylines who face common and extraordinary moral dilemmas that seem to shape their overall characters. Lam introduces themes of love, fear, tradition, drugs, death, self doubt, duality, etc.

In using a first person point of view, Selzer provides a direct link between the narrator and the audience. The thoughts and emotions of the physician/surgeon aren’t filtered through the distance of a third person narrator, instead they are raw and at the moment, as the physician feels them. Selzer begins the passage by explaining why a surgeon would write. A surgeon is so used to such gory things, such as “feeling the slow slide of intestines against the back of his hand”… why would he take the time out his day to write? Selzer describes writing as a form of expression. Writing is a way to “search for some meaning in the ritual of surgery, which is at once murderous, painful, healing, and full of love.” Personally, that line was my favorite in the piece. Surgery has many implications- yes, it can kill and it can cause pain (not only to the patient, but the family of the patient), but at the same time, it is performed so that the patient can heal and suffering can end. In the next paragraph, Selzer emphasizes that point by describing the motive behind surgery. He explains how a surgery isn’t performed with the intention of cutting flesh, repairing a problem, and moving on to the next patient. The

In consideration of procedures deemed acceptable and unacceptable for physicians to perform the original oath of Hippocatates is largely out dated to what may be considered unrealistic for present day medicine. One of the major discrepancies lies in Hippocrates belief in non-invasive procedures which forbids against the “use of a knife”. Hippocrates timid approach to healing is quite understandable and applicable in an ancient civilization. In addition to cultivating the profession of a physician it was also Hippocrates responsibility to introduce it to society as a respectful and reputable practice. This is hardly the case in today’s society where medicine is so advanced the focus seems have shifted

Throughout our lives, we are plagued by the notion of ‘ethics’ or morals - the basis of our everyday behavior. The medical field is no exception, with doctors constantly reminded of the ethical duties they must carry out for each of their patients. An example of unethical doctors is demonstrated in Daniel Keyes’s short story, Flowers for Algernon. The story features Charlie Gordon, a man with an intellectual disability who strives to become smarter. He is a candidate for a new surgical procedure that is used to triple one’s intelligence which was directed by Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur. Although the procedure holds promise for helping a vast amount of people, Dr. Nemur and Dr. Strauss acted unethically by selecting Charlie to undergo the operation because they did not finish testing the procedure and because Charlie was unable to make a proper decision.

One way the board encourages the readers is by using emotional appeals. Throughout this editorial, they make the audience feel safe. The editorial board goes on to say, “ Likewise, the strict surgical standards

The field of medicine has been constantly progressing through the centuries with surgery, as one of its most fundamental structure of medicine. Cutting people open to find the harm and relieving them of it. But as the field of surgery progress over time; the surgical environment has developed a gender sphere that makes it difficult for women to become surgeons. The glass ceiling is a political metaphor that exists to explain the gender disadvantages within disciplined jobs (The Glass Ceiling Effect*). Women today, regardless of their qualifications face an obstacle that “appear[s] to be a distinctively gender phenomenon” (1) in any highly disciplined jobs, especially in the field of surgery.

Have you ever thought, "I want to be a surgeon!" Well if you have better start paying more attention in English class because the study of literature is one of the most important things in your career. The study of literature is a vital part of a surgeon's career, because it teaches and enhance ones character. A surgeon is a doctor who is specialized in performing operations on the human body to fix a problem the body is facing. This requires a great deal of care and precision. What a surgeon also requires is a lot of character, which only come from studying literature thought your life. To and when you operate on another human, you must be honest, caring and also responsible. These character traits you learn from literature will make you one of the best surgeons around.