Why is the Hippocratic Oath always misspelt, I have often wondered. Shouldn't it really be the Hypocritic Oath? I am told that graduates from medical school are supposed to swear by this Oath that enjoins them to care for the sick and not profiteer from their misery. After five years of the serious swotting that an education in medicine entails, this I think is really quite unfair. Why bring Greek philosophers of medicine and the like into this business of healing, is what I say. Fortunately, nobody seems to be taking old Hippocrates, or his Oath, too seriously, going by the evidence at hand.There are broadly two categories of doctors. Those who specialise and make money and those who don't specialise and make money. I still can't make up my mind as to which category appeals to me the more because both have sterling virtues going for them.The specialists are the ones who learn more and more about less and less, in distant places like Johns Hopkins and the Harvard School of Medicine, until they arrive atthe decision that they know everything about very little. Like they know all there is to humanly understand about the left nostril or the right kidney. It's then that they decide to come home to India for the kill.But before they do that they first set up a fancy consulting room in a swanky part of the city, with a reception area that resembles the lobby of the Taj Palace. Entering the air-conditioned ambience of one of these, complete with piped music, designer secretary in designerwear and Anjolie Ela Menon on the wall, could make you more ill than when you set off. ``Abandon hope all ye who enter in for ye shall pay for this'', seems to be written all over these walls in lilac oil distemper.Only those blessed with fat medical allowances can negotiate such spaces, light of foot and mind. Here I have a special word of caution for those with cardiac conditions because, unfortunately for them, it's the cardiologists who seem to go in for this kind of thing most of all. The cardiologists of the world seemto have collectively arrived at the corporate conclusion that only the very rich have hearts.The second category of doctors - those who believe, unlike Alexander Pope, that too much learning is a dangerous thing - is perhaps the more interesting tribe. Like the common housecrow, they are ubiquitous. You can spot them under trees outside the regional transport office (RTO), or in somebody's garage behind a white screen marked with a big red cross.What I like about the ones that sit under umbrellas outside the RTO and certify to your good health or lack of it in five minutes flat, is their complete and absolute lack of curiosity in the real state of your health. They are willing to certify a corpse to be in the pink of health or a blind man to possess a 20/20 vision, if that indeed be the requirement. If, however, they need to certify that you are suffering from palsy and cannot therefore attend office for a fortnight, that also is no problem. These are practical people, not given to askinguncomfortable questions of morality and such like. All that matters to them is the Rs 30 or Rs 50 that comes their way by way of fees for their professional services.The garage physician takes his/her profession much more seriously. They have this habit of going through the whole routine of placing the stethoscope on your chest and asking you to take a deep breath. Sometimes they tell you to open your mouth wide and flash a torch into its depths or make you clamber on to the examining table and hammer lightly on your ribcage. It is the gravitas with which they perform these tasks that convinces you that they are thorough professional beings.As you go home, clutching a little white packet full of yellow, pink and blue pills to be taken three times a day before or after meals for five days, you are convinced that you are dangerously ill but now have a good chance of seeing the light of another day thanks to the curative talents of these great men and women.And, believe me, the pills work. The momentyou stop taking them you feel so much better that you can easily persuade yourself that you are cured.
