By Cheong Pak Yean
Care more particularly for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease.
—Sir William Osler
Gentle Epiphanies
I have a pair of Norman Rockwell reproductions on the wall in my clinic. To me, The Doctor and the Doll (1929) represents the art of medicine, with the doctor relating to a frightened little girl by examining her doll. Before the Shot (1958) depicts the science, with a doctor in his white coat preparing to inject the exposed buttock of a young boy. These reproductions have inspired reflections about the mechanics of practice with generations of medical students.
One student was pleasantly surprised that a clay model given by her grandmother when she started medical school, was based on the first painting. A gift to a beloved grandchild embodies the elder’s hopes for that child to gain art and wisdom as she starts her life’s studies.
Commentary
The science of medicine is, we like to think, research-based, algorithm-driven, logical, and reductionistic, drawing from the wider body of evidence to reach our patient’s diagnosis and management. The art, on the other hand, has always been somewhat nebulous. We think of a colleague with years of experience and an inexplicable instinct for the correct conclusion. We think of some older physician who can calm his distressed patient with a word.
Perhaps the two are the sides of the same coin.
The science draws from the world to the patient. The art starts with the patient to the world.
The calligraphy in the feature image is an old saying that is often seen in doctors’ rooms. This set was written by a medical student attached to my clinic. The words describe a good practitioner with both heart and skill. With these four words, I think the ancients have captured the art-science construct most elegantly.
AProf Cheong Pak Yean is an internal family physician and psychotherapist. He is an SMA honorary member, past president SMA, College and adjunct associate professor of NUS. His current interest is in medical communication and humanities.
The commentary and vignette were reproduced with permission from the book “Being Human, Stories from Family Medicine” edited by Cheong Pak Yean and Ong Chooi Peng and published in 2021 by the College of Family Physicians Singapore.
Pictures of illness experiences were drawn by NUS medical students in workshops conducted from 2012-2017 by A/Prof Cheong Pak Yean. Senior family physicians subsequently shared vignettes and commentaries based on the pictures.
