The Law is a Ass
- At April 18, 2004
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
8
Doctors are better writers than lawyers: Lewis Thomas, Perri Klass and Atul Gawande vs. John Grisham, Scott Turow and Lisa Scottoline. Why?
I think doctors have to be smarter, for one thing. But mainly the difference lies in the worlds they have to consider. Medicine draws upon the natural world: evolutionary biology, anatomy, chemistry, physics. The whole oyster, with its origins going back to the big bang. Law is a self-contained universe, created wholly by humans, mostly in the last five-hundred years, and nowhere older than five-thousand years. The law is a hothouse, designed to blunt the effect of the real world on its specimens.
Lawyers have their moments, of course: I’m thinking of Lincoln at Gettysburg. But today we have Scalia of Hattiesburg. The more recent the vintage of lawyer, the less likely he or she will be broadly schooled or widely read.
Lawyers, and the copy writers who blurb their books, embrace the conceit that they are expert observers of human nature. This is true only in the sense that sewage treatment workers are expert observers of water quality. Lawyers see only people locked in a struggle with others: their expert observations are overgeneralizations drawn from a data pool of the criminal, the greedy the bereaved, and very occasionally, the downtrodden.
Doctors, with some exceptions, treat the broad spectrum of humanity: the rich and poor, the broken and the whole. Doctors deal with the world first-hand: one can’t cure pneumonia by appealing to a jury’s emotions; beat a brain tumor on a technicality; nor appeal a fatal heart attack.
Finally, every time a lawyer wins a case, someone else loses. As a profession and an institution, the law can reinforce the worst in the human heart. Doctors, in contrast, aren’t engaged in a zero sum game: if the doctor wins, everybody wins. There is plenty wrong with medicine the way it is practiced in industrialized society, but it lends its practitioners, and authors, a more expansive view of the human condition than the one from the bar.
steelbrassnwood
Maybe not for long?
I don’t know the other two doctors you mention, but Lewis Thomas came of age in a very different world than what we have now. I’m wondering if the demise of the GP, increasing specialization, managed care programs, and the pressure on doctors to spend less time with actual patients, will change that. How many doctors nowadays will spend their careers treating a broad spectrum of humanity? Versus performing the same few operations on anonymous patients who have good enough health care to afford them?
Or perhaps nurse practitioners will start writing good books? 🙂
admin
Re: Maybe not for long?
Well, the range of patients doctors see is just one factor (I was careful not to say that doctors were better people, or more altruistic than lawyers). Specialization is an issue, as is the availability of insurance and access to health care, no doubt about it.
By the way, The New York Times Magazine was devoted to health care this week, and two stories are germane: The End of Primary Care (As recently as a decade ago, generalists, not specialists, were going to change medicine. Then H.M.O.’s changed everything.); and The Writing Cure (Can understanding narrative make you a better doctor?).
Perri Klass, M.D., was the Vital Signs columnist for Discover Magazine for several years. Her excellent book A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student is not just a window into the world of medicine, but a window into the psyche of the doctor in training. Klass has also published other books on medicine, at least one novel and a collection of short stories.
Atul Gawande, M.D., is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. His book Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science was published in 2002.
Anonymous
I find the following line of questioning quite offensive while visiting a new doctor:
“Name?”
“Type of insurance?”
“OK, what seems to be your problem.”
Dr. McCoy never asked about insurance.
Bill
mckitterick
You got it, mister. Though I cannot agree with the premise that doctors might be smarter: Recently read a report (Science News?) that claims people in professions ranging from the most menial to the most complex tend to have the same range of smarts as the others. The education, socialization, and motives probably are more at cause, and of course the need to win vs. the urge to help. Well, and to rake in the buckies, too.
Chris
admin
With the Fleet
Well, McCoy was a ship’s surgeon: if you join the Navy all your health care will be free. Besides, I’m not sure I want to be treated by a guy in powder blue velour pajamas who has a drinking problem.
admin
Who’s Smart?
Yeah, I guess that kind of begs the question of what intelligence is. (Not to mention grammar.)
mckitterick
Re: Who’s Smart?
You mockin’ my grammar, mister? Huh? Well then.
Chris
admin
Re: Who’s Smart?
No! I was mocking my grammar. Especially since I was spouting off about intelligence.