Laughter in medicine
By Sarla Sharma

SOBRIETY and solemnity are the hallmarks of the medical profession. We cannot take a physician lightly or flippantly. Even then, humour has a way, of surfacing when least expected. For all their solemnity and sobriety and nobleness of their profession, medical practitioners are also human beings. So they are also occasionally at the giving and receiving end of humour. Some illustrations will bear this out.

A doctor once wrote out a prescription for a patient and told him, "Get this made up and this will soon put you right."

The patient glanced through the prescription and then put it to the doctor, "Would you mind lending me Rs 50 to get it made up?"

The doctor was astonished at the "nerves" of the patient. He cut out a line from the prescription and gave it back to the patient. This perplexed the patient and he looked at the doctor with inquiring eyes. The doctor explained, "I had put down something to tone up your nerves. But I have now cut it out since I find you already have stronger nerves than are good for your health."

A patient who suffered frequent bouts of depression once implored his doctor to give him something which would make him flare up and be ready to shout from the housetops. "Surely, surely, you will find it in the bill!" said the doctor.

They say a patient must never argue with his doctor. For in medical matters doctors have, and must of course have, the last word. But, some diehard patients don’t have patience, and cannot help arguing. To silence them, the weapon the doctors use (after having exhausted all other weapons like persuasion, cajoling, intimidation etc) is this verbal aling, "Are you the doctor or am I?"

But then quacks also make use this weapon — but only to camouflage their ignorance and without the patients.

One such inexperienced medico, presumably a quack, checked up a wizened farmer and pronounced him dead. The patient was only stunned and, as providence would have it, regained consciousness even as the doctor pronounced his verdict.He sat up and said, "No, no, doctor, I am not dead." At this the farmer’s wife, who was standing nearby, made him lie down again, saying, "Shut up. Lie down as before. The doctor says you are dead. Do you know better than the doctor?" The tale is apocryphal but it has its moral.

Repartee pops up in all walks of life.So even doctors are sometimes their victims. "I must say," a doctor once complained, "that the world is very ungrateful to our profession. How seldom once sees a public memorial created for a doctor?"

"How seldom?" retorted his friend, "How can you say that? Just think of our cemeteries."

Once a lady rang up a doctor to call him over for an emergency. Apologetically, she put in "I am sorry, doctor, I am calling you to come over at such an odd hour from such a distance."

"Never mind", replied the enthusiastic doctor "I have also to attend to another patients in your area.So I will be killing two birds with one stone!"

Some inscriptions on tombstones of medical practitioners make interesting reading. The patients of a doctor whose practice was not large inscribed the following on his tombstones: "He survived all his patients."

Similarly John Brown, a dentist, had the following inscription on his tomb:

Stranger, tread this ground with gravity;

Dentist Brown is filling his last cavity.