The cunning man: a novel by Robertson Davies

Author:Robertson Davies
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Physicians, Medical, Fiction, Literary, Intellectuals, General, Holistic Medicine
ISBN: 9780140248302
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1996-02-01T08:00:00+00:00

[2]

Oh, Robert Burns! I have never been one of your besotted admirers, but every now and then you hit the nail resoundingly on the head.

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!

Me! Long, cornery, and looking like a horse with a secret sorrow! This from a woman I befriended and saved more than once from her own English beef-witted folly! But I suppose there is some justice in it. I am tall, and not fleshy; Nuala never stops reminding me of that review which spoke of my archaeological figure. But -- "a horse with a secret sorrow"! If I were describing myself I might say that my face bore a certain morose splendour, but I am not describing myself; I am considering old Chips' letter about her first encounter with me, when I called to see if the stables might be rented, and renovated and made into a clinic for my work. Because at last I had decided what my work was to be.

I wanted to go on being a physician, but I came back from the war too badly used up by four years of hard and uncongenial work, topped off with a near-death imprisonment in cold water for just under four days. All right, many people have known worse things, but let them rejoice in their strength. I felt myself exhausted to the point where I never expected to be up to par again, and I wanted the rest of my life to be on my own terms. I wanted to practise medicine, but I did not want to sit all day in a dismal office with a steel desk, my diplomas on the wall in cheap frames, and a dusty bunch of paper flowers for a "homey touch," giving something like ten minutes each to a procession of patients with the same ten diseases -- the colds, the coughs, the 'flus, etc. etc. until I became rich and dull-witted and disgusted with myself. God forbid that I should speak ill -- or very ill -- of my colleagues, but I had no wish to be like them. In Ward J at my last military hospital, where I treated victims of "friendly fire" with a mixture of conventional medicine, advice which did not conform to psychiatry as it is defined, and the charms and releases of literature, I had discovered something which I could not define, but which I wished to pursue and examine. I knew it would take time and lead me in some unconventional directions.

Jobs were open to me. The Department of Medicine at the University invited me to lecture in pathology, or diagnosis, whichever I liked. I had cut up enough people -- mostly men -- to be a good pathologist and my pre-war work with the police made that possibility attractive, but I did not want the responsibility of being a crime-solver and disease-tracker. Diagnosis was also attractive and I had shown some skill in it, but I

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.