I Am a Doctor (ca. 1959)

scam I was just scared out of my width but well anyway thanks not at all Miss Barton that's what I'm here for goodbye doctor goodbye M Bon bye paty bye [Music] looks like we can shut up shop now the last one oh that time too you look a little tired oh I'm not too tired Millie why don't you lock up and go on I'll be here a little while yet now you're not going to work no no no I won't be long I just want to dictate a couple of things here but you don't need to wait you can type them up in the morning all right doctor but don't stay too long it's been a full day see you in the morning oh sure sure [Music] Millie good night good [Applause] [Music] night I [Music] yes it has been a full day everything from stitching up little Patty Barton's hand to delivering a baby to diagnosing a case of leukemia delivering a death sentence [Music] Patty Barton severe laceration of the right hand Severance of the flexor tendon of the inex [Music] [Music] I'll have to check this out with Cummings but there's not much room for doubt a cute leukemia Millie head this one up to whom it may concern it's not a report it's um or just type it up and we'll decide later what to call it all set to whom it may concern you don't know me but I know you you're young probably in high school or just getting started in college you're sharp with a first class mind and plenty of potential in a lot of directions and your future is full of promise only you haven't quite decided which promise you want to hold yourself too maybe you've already kicked some career ideas around with guidance people a faculty advisor or maybe your parents or perhaps successful men in various Fields if you have one of them is sure to have come up with the idea of practicing medicine being a doctor Dr Smith H how about Dr Harrison or Dr psychovich whatever your name is that title doctor sounds mighty good in front of it but maybe you've heard that getting into med school is no snap it isn't if you're adult but you're not the medical school admission routine is an appraisal of you as a person are you physically able to carry the study load are you emotionally mature have you been able to discipline yourself to the adult world of learning did you make above average grades and still have time for Social Development along the way you will be evaluated for your interest in the world you live in a doctor doesn't deal with a mechanical Contraption of Bones and muscle he deals with man who is influenced by society and so the doctor must understand Society the medical school will want to know if if you like people for no one will work with them more intimately than you will are you naturally sympathetic wanting to help those around you whatever the crisis you will be given the greatest trust one person can give another and you must live up to that trust it must color Every Act of your life for such is the characteristic of the true [Applause] doctor when the postman finally delivers that letter you've been waiting for the one that tells you you've been accepted into medical school it means more than a chance to do exciting work it's an Accolade in its own right it says to the whole world that you're topnotch they don't come any better you pass the letter around trying to be nonchalant but deep down you Revel in being one of those chosen to serve mankind it doesn't hurt of course that the eyes that look up to you are the biggest blue eyes in the [Music] world perhaps you're wondering why I'm telling you all this and I wonder myself except that even though I may seem to you to be rather ancient I still feel close to you and the way you feel about things or maybe I'm just taking stock of myself as a doctor in the comparatively few years I've been in practice because I do feel like I'm really just getting started it'll have to be the same way with you there aren't any boy doctors there are only men men aged by at least 5 years of intensive study beyond the college level study in 21 different fields Anatomy biochemistry physiology microbiology and on and on into clinical practice none of it's easy and there's too much for one one human being to ever hope to master except except that from the first time you learned to take a pulse it's there the throbbing beat of Life under your fingertips echoing through your stethoscope Whispering all around you as the living Beating Heart of man pounds out its Urgent Message life Must Go On Life must go on life must go on that's the challenge you accept in the study of medicine the responsibility for preserving life when you study the intricacies of life it comes first before family friends or your own liberty otherwise stay out of medicine it has no place for you nor you for it you may as well know if you don't already that the study of medicine exacts a tough Financial toll you'll probably be able to see fellows your own age start living off the fat of the land while you and it's at least 5 years more after college before you begin to earn of course you can apply for scholarships and Loan funds which are available but unless you can count on fairly substantial help from your family or latch on to a working wife you may have to resign yourself to starting practice on the red ink Side Of The Ledger as I dictate this I am well aware that I may scare you out of a wonderful field a field that is Rich and rewarding for although few doctors amass great financial wealth there is no satisfaction on Earth no amount of money or valuables which can buy the look in a parent face when you break the news that that child will live and live a normal life no man can claim a richer reward than this the trembling look of gratitude from one whose suffering has been eased it is a look which you will know many times in your working life and it will always be the spur which drives you to your greatest efforts perhaps you will be an OB battling time to induce that first yell of defiance from a new life and the look will be a heartfelt thank [Music] you perhaps you'll be a surgeon whose scalpel must cut swiftly and unerringly while the face is unknowing and still whatever your field in medicine you're caught up in the most fundamental Battle of mankind it is you and life against disease and death the techniques will become so familiar to you that your hands go about them almost automatically but never your mind and never your heart you will bring Comfort to the man afraid the man who wants to live his enemy is your enemy and what he cannot do for himself you will do together you will fight the thing he fears and God willing you will Triumph if anyone ever said a doctor was tireless it was not the doctor he tires weariness overcomes him in his chair but when the phone rings he goes forgetting the nap he needs the eyes so slow to focus forgetting himself entirely with the understanding of a patient wife he goes he goes because he has a rage against his enemy disease and death and whatever face of death or disease he hates with the greatest Fury there he specializes if he would strike out against the brutal disfigurements of an inborn deformity marring the face of a child he goes into plastic surgery if he would combat the erosive attacks of age he goes into geriatrics if he would Pit himself against the invisible Terrors which make a human being less than man he goes into Psychiatry wherever the doctor specializes he will study further usually for several years more in medical schools and hospitals and for every day of his life thereafter for like every other doct from the youngest intern to the most experienced family physician he must continue to learn only through knowledge can he hope to earn his greatest reward a healthier life a longer life for those who come to him all this is very idealistic I know this but I can't help it I am idealistic about medicine but I'm realistic about it too nobody knows better than I do a private hell of having to face up to your own [Music] limitations how can you tell a wonderful wife and mother that she is about to become a widow that her husband has leukemia and there's nothing nothing you can do about it takes the guts of a cold impersonal executioner to do a thing like this and that kind of Courage you don't have but you'll have to do it all the same maybe that's why not just your patience but your fellow citizens give you the kind of respect they do your opinion will be solicited on Community Affairs you will be honored as other men are seldom honored you will be considered Confidant and consultant by men and women older than yourself the youthful man in other fields May often be considered an upst start but the young doctor by Dent of his long preparation is looked up to and respected if Fame means anything to you the world has a way of remembering its Great Men of medicine from IM hotep who practiced in 2700 BC to hypocrates whose Creed is our Creed today through Harvey lisst and McDow the great names ReSound Through the Ages to be joined in our time by Dr Albert Schweitzer one of the greatest men of our Century choosing from among his many talents the role of healer selfless service to mankind there are of course thousands who serve as selflessly in Medical School classrooms the dedicated teachers who may combine their practice with instruction or may devote themselves exclusively to passing on medicine's vast fund of knowledge and techniques to the Next Generation you will find the dedicated also in the relative obscurity of Research Laboratories doctors and technicians caught up in the fascination of medicine's great intellectual challenge the wanting to know how and why the absorbing quest for cause and effect the unrest with the imperfect the Everlasting compulsion to find and to give to mankind the truth from this dedication common to all doctors come the great forward strides the discovering of new medicines the perfecting of new techniques the probing into the secrets of life itself through the functioning of the [Music] cell the research will never stop as long as there is yet one riddle left unsolved somewhere there lives a man who will show us why a minute inanimate Speck suddenly becomes a living cell are you that man somewhere growing up as a youngster who will show us how to alter the forces that make a heart stop beating is it you somewhere going to school or working in a laboratory is the one who will show us the answer to cancer are you knew that one I wish you were here now forgive me cancer is a very personal thing with me acute leukemia what do I know for all I've learned I know the symptoms when it starts I know the probable course it will follow and I know that it it usually runs its course in less than a year physician heal thyself do you know what I think about I think about all the exciting things in medicine I'm going to miss and that you're going to get a crack at out there circling the earth are hurtling machines satellites fantastic achievements but not much more than specks of cosmic dust compared to the job of putting man into space and who's going to tell them how to do that doctors doctors who know what happens to man's body when it's subjected to the crushing acceleration of blast off doctors who have charted what happens to man's equilibrium when he finds himself tossed about in the unearthly confusion of weight lessness doctors who have learned what will threaten men's Minds in the vast and lonely expanses between the Stars the firing of man into space the world of creative Endeavor has never held up such a tempting challenge as space medicine holds for you of tomorrow and what of that frightening Genie Unleashed so violently in our age who will help to put the genie of atomic power back into a bottle so that it may serve mankind doctors doctors who are even now using Atomic medicines to diagnose and treat obure ailments using radioisotopes to search out cell functionings never before revealed harnessing the at at to stamp out and ease the pain of advanced malignancy may be possible to use their atomic skills to wipe out completely some of the most stubborn ills which haunt [Music] mankind I can't say but you can and I envy you I envy you well Millie I really had to go at it that time didn't I don't sign my name to this just say I am a doctor oh [Music] [Music]