Christine Ko: [00:00:00] Welcome back to SEE HEAR FEEL. Today. I'm going to do something a little bit different. Today, there's no guest that I'm going to be speaking with. My Department of Dermatology recently had a retreat. We had Dr. Benjamin Doolittle, who was on this podcast, and I can put a link to his episode in the show notes. He came and we read aloud, we read together in smaller groups, we read individually a poem by John Stone called Gaudeamus Igitur. I find this poem amazing. I will put the poem in the show notes as well. It's not the shortest poem, this one, but it's a beautiful poem. This poem was for the commencement address of a medical school. A lot of it is about patients, and cures, and medicines, and the heart, and how you can heal, and different pressures that might be on doctors. There's a lot of that in the poem, but I think this actually [00:01:00] really applies to anyone.
Gaudeamus Igitur by John Stone
For this is the day of joy
which has been fourteen hundred and sixty days in coming
and fourteen hundred and fifty-nine nights
For today in the breathing name of Brahms and the cat of Christopher Smart through the unbroken line of language
and all the nouns stored in the angular gyrus
today is a commencing
For this is the day you know too little against the day when you will know too much
For you will be invincible and vulnerable in the same breath which is the breath of your patients
For their breath is our breathing and our reason
For the patient will know the answer, and you will ask him, ask her
For the family may know the answer
For there may be no answer and you will know too little again or there will be an answer and you will know too much
forever
For you will look smart and feel ignorant and the patient will not know which day it is for you and you will pretend to be smart [00:02:00] out of ignorance
For you must fear ignorance more than cyanosis
For whole days will move in the direction of rain
For you will cry and there will be no one to talk to or no one but yourself
For you will be lonely
For you will be alone
For there is a difference
For there is no seriousness like joy
For there is no joy like seriousness
For the days will run together in gallops and the years
go by as fast as the speed of thought which is faster than the speed of light or Superman or Superwoman
For you will not be Superman
For you will not be Superwoman
For you will not be Solomon but you will be asked the question, nevertheless
For after you learn what to do, how, and when to do it, the question will be whether
For there will be addictions: whiskey, tobacco, love
For they will be difficult to cure
For you yourself will pass the kidney stone of pain and be joyful
For this is the end of examinations
For this is the beginning of testing
For death will give the [00:03:00] final examination and everyone will pass
For the sun is always right on time and even that may be reason for a kind of joy
For there are all kinds of all degrees of joy
For love is the highest joy
For which reason the best hospital is a house of joy even with rooms of pain and loss exits of misunderstanding
For there is the mortar of faith
For it helps to believe
For Mozart can heal and no one knows where he is buried
For penicillin can heal and the word and the knife
For the placebo will work and you will think you know why
For the placebo will have side effects and you will know you do not know why
For none of these may heal
For joy is nothing if not mysterious
For your patients will test you for spleen and for the four humors
For they will know the answer
For they have the disease
For disease will peer up over the hedge of health with only its eyes [00:04:00] showing
For the T waves will be peaked and you will not know why
For there will be computers
For there will be hard data and they will be hard to understand
For the trivial will trap you and the important escape you
For the Committee will be unable to resolve the question
For there will be the arts and some will call them soft data whereas in fact they are the hard data by which our lives are lived
For everyone comes to the arts too late
For you can be trained to listen only for the oboe out of the whole orchestra
For you may need to strain to hear the voice of the patient in the thin reed of his crying
For you will learn to see most acutely out of the corner of your eye to hear best with your inner ear
For there are late signs and early signs
For the patient's story will come to you like hunger, like thirst
For you will know the answer like second nature, like first
For the patient will live and you will try to understand[00:05:00]
For you will be amazed or the patient will not live and you will try to understand
For you will be baffled
For you will try to explain both, either, to the family
For there will be laying on of hands and the letting go
For love is what death would always intend if it had the choice
For the fever will drop, the bone remold along its lines of force the speech return the mind remember itself
For there will be days of joy
For there will be elevators of elation and you will walk triumphantly in purest joy along the halls of the hospital and say Yes to all the dark corners where no one is listening
For the heart will lead
For the head will explain but the final common pathway is the heart whatever kingdom may come
For what matters finally is how the human spirit is spent
For this is the day of joy
For this is the morning to rejoice
For this is the beginning
Therefore, let us rejoice. [00:06:00] Gaudeaumus igitur.
Thank you for listening all the way to here. One thing we did during our retreat was choose our favorite line and talk about it with someone else. I would really love it if you share this episode with a close friend, whether a doctor or not. I hope that this poem touches you as much as it has me. Thank you for listening.