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I’ve always envied doctors. Perhaps that’s from being exposed to the hit medical drama E.R. as a child, or maybe it’s the fact that I have anesthesiologists in my extended family, but being an M.D. has always seemed like an awesome gig.
I know that’s not some groundbreaking revelation, but I just want to acknowledge that being a doctor would be fucking cool. The money is outrageously good. The prestige factor? God, imagine being able to tell people you’re a brain surgeon. Screaming “You switched the samples!” at fundraisers with my fellow doctors would be a laugh riot. I never had the willpower or the smarts to go into medicine – I barely scraped by my one hundred level biology and math courses in undergrad – but the human body opened up like it is during surgery fascinates me.
Putting someone under, slicing them open with a scalpel and seeing still-beating organs while you have your way with them save their life? What a trip that would be.
Removing a giant tumor or repairing some broken down artery would be a high that I doubt you can get anywhere else. That’s interesting to me. It’s like opening up the hood of a car and changing the oil or replacing a valve.
I recently finished up a television series starring Clive Owen called The Knick. It takes viewers inside the world of a New York City hospital during the early 1900’s, when surgeons were essentially performing procedures using the trial and error method. Some of the ideas they have for surgery are insane. They use cocaine to put people under and sometimes you’re sitting there watching saying to yourself “This guy is a fucking butcher.”
It was the pre antibiotic era of medicine, and people were getting slaughtered during surgeries that today are considered simple and routine. It’s gory, it’s dark, and Clive Owen’s character is a cocaine addicted mess. In short, the show is awesome. An incredibly interesting peak into medicine during a time when people were just guessing.
It’s a damn shame that it got cancelled but those are the breaks, and since I now have a itch that can only be scratched by looking at pictures and/or vidoe of people getting operated on with medieval surgical tools, I’ve decided to take my talents to the Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago this afternoon. I don’t take advantage of museums as much as I should.
I’ve got access to some of the best museums in the country and I never go. The Museum of Surgical Science is a lesser known spot. It’s not the field museum or the Shedd aquarium, but I just want to see some blood and guts today.
I’d kill to go to one of those operating rooms with a theater in it like they had in The Knick and just watch some surgeon deal for four hours like Randy Johnson with the D-Backs. What I’m looking for today is some old-timey stuff. I want to see the instruments doctors were using in the 1800s to deal with bronchitis or an abscess. I want to see some amputations, some hair raising operations in less-than-sanitary operating rooms.
Give me all of it. I want the blood and the guts. I’ll be at the surgical science museum if anyone wants to join me. Enjoy the day, folks. I know I will..
Image via Unsplash
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jduda@grandex.co
You like prestige, good money, and slicing open the human body? It’s not too late to become a mortician.
Gory surgeries are pretty cool, but pretty rare these days unless you’re on a trauma service. Most stuff I’ve scrubbed in on recently has been done laparoscopically or with the Da Vinci robot. The surgeons like to torture us med students by having us scrub in, then stand there and hold a retractor for like 5 hours without a bathroom break while we get yelled at by the scrub techs. The surgical science museum sounds dope though, will definitely check it out one day
Can confirm. We’re getting ready to install a Da Vinci robot in our OR’s and it’s insane to see that thing perform on people. Looks like something out of a SciFi flick.
Give therealdrmiami a follow on snapchat. He’s a Miami based plastic surgeon that lets you follow along with his surgeries.