Patients and suffering
by David
City Hospital Tuberculosis Division, Seattle, 1927 via Seattle Municipal Archives
Rereading my notes from Susan Sontag’s book Illness as Metaphor, I was struck by the following connection. Sontag writes:
Etymologically, patient means sufferer. It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades … The metaphorized illnesses that haunt the collective imagination are all hard deaths, or envisaged as such. Being deadly is not in itself enough to produce terror.
She’s right on the etymology. The infinitely reliable Oxford English Dictionary gives the low-down:
patient, adj. and n. Anglo-Norman and Middle French pacient, patient (French patient)… (noun) sick person (14th cent.), person who undergoes an action (c1380) and its etymon classical Latin patient-, patins able or willing to endure or undergo, capable of enduring hardship, long-suffering, tolerant (in post-classical Latin also as noun, person who endures (5th cent.)
I find the etymology of “patient” fascinating — almost liberating — because it is so at odds with the modern notion of a patient. In our current vernacular, “patient” has come to signify someone who is sick in a medical sense, a person who has some kind of biomedical abnormality. But the historical context of the word reminds us that it is not sickness which defines a patient but suffering.
Isn’t this a wonderful reminder of what modern medicine should really be about? I think doctors, nurses, and all others in the medical field (including humble volunteers like myself!) would be helped by remembering that our ultimate goal is not to defeat a pathogen, to fix a physiological irregularity, to cure a disease. Though these are indeed lofty aims, they are all merely means for us to accomplish our true goal — to alleviate or eliminate suffering.
Comments
David, I have once again checked in to see what you have been up to. It’s amazing and slightly intimidating to read your blog. You have a very unique voice in all your entries. I love the fact that I always come away with something new I’ve learned or something to ponder. Life is far too short to be in a state of stasis (boy will Tom and Nick give me hell for writing this!). I love that you are embracing life and always seems to approach each new adventure with a kind of wide-eyed enthusiasm. I hope you never lose this appreciation for life. Thanks for being your remarkable self.
Admiringly,
Julie
Be my doctor. Please.
Hi David! I love your commentary here. I too am fascinated with the intersections between language and culture, and although perhaps indirectly related, thought you might find interesting the distinction between “suffering” and “pain” as a parallel thought experiment. In my work as a doula, the following quote helped to shape my approach to pregnant women going into labor: “We can have pain without suffering, and suffering without pain.” As a physical therapist who has specialized in childbirth education since 1968, Peggy Simkin distinguishes between these two traditionally linked ideas—pain and suffering—as a way to remind health care providers that the level of suffering one experiences cannot necessarily be directly correlated to the amount of pain one endures. Therefore, it is imperative that health care providers appreciate how experiences and coping mechanisms—or suffering—can differ from person to person and from community to community, no matter the congruency in health indication.
keep posting.. but ALSO, i miss you and hope you are well.