For those with chronic illness impelled to attend
a place of healing and comfort, hospitals resemble
institutions of religious faith where parishioners
gather seeking direction and assurance from a higher
order whose earthly representative is regarded
as an emissary from god. No less is the medical
practitioner considered a demi-god healing the ill
thrusting the spectre of the Grim Reaper away from
contention. And so doctors have become priests
of health, a position to which they accustom themselves
in entitlements of venerated power over death
taking their very special place in public trust. Until
nature presumed to retrieve for herself the overlooked
reality as arbiter of existence, creator of all that is
in whom alone divine authority rests, thrusting the
world of man into a mad dilemma of its own
devising where divine intermediaries, of faith and
medicine find themselves helpless and what's more
become themselves vulnerable targets reducing their
status to mere expendable human beings. There the
story does not end for delving deep into their psyches
and professions, suppressing fear and their own
humanity they rise to the occasion embracing their
colleagues while struggling desperately to own
the reputation they burnished to rescue humanity.
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