Thursday, June 07, 2007

Dr. Jerome Groopman One - Blog - Reader Fan Club!!


Adapted from How Doctors Think, Chapter 6:


"The Uncertainty of the Expert"


"Dr. James Lock is the chief of cardiology at Boston's Children's Hospital.


"Lock explained that for lower - middle - class people, becoming a doctor was the way to go.


"He was suspended from school in the second grade and expelled in the sixth.


"The psychiatrist seemed to recognize Lock's potential despite his subpar performance."


The shrink recommended he be placed in the eight grade, and as our author continues:


"I suggested that these days the psychiatrist may have diagnosed him with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin.


"Lock was a National Merit Scholar, and at the age of fifteen he went to college at Case Western Reserve, then on to medical school at Stanford."


Dr. Lock's personal boyhood hero was, would you believe? One Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. As Dr. Groopman says:


"Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland, into a struggling Irish - Catholic family.


"Wealthy relatives provided for his education at a Jesuit boarding school in England, which he loathed.


"Although many members of the family were artists, Conan Doyle chose medicine, and returned from England to Edinburgh for his studies.


"Like his hero [Sherlock] Holmes, James Lock ponders the nature and interpretation of available evidence and tries to imagine a better future.


"Lock spoke about physical genius, the kind of genius displayed by stellar athletes who can anticipate exactly where the ball is headed.


"Growing up, Lock idolized baseball players who could connect with a breaking curve ball and hit it out of the park ..."

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