Thirsters communication

The Thirsters are a Wise Guys  like group, meeting in Portland, Oregon every Thursday.  They recently sent this communication to John who thought you might be interested in attending, either  occasionally or regularly.

THIRSTER OPEN DISCUSSION – JUNE 29th 2017

Dear Thirsters in Residence:

Want to discuss culture, politics, problems of society, local community issues, the Peace Corps, history, or anthropology with thoughtful and informed people?  Want to be a part of an intellectual community to which  you can contribute and from which you can learn?   If so, then the Thirster Open Discussion this coming Thursday is for you!

We also invite Thirsters with informed opinions on cultural topics that you find disconcerting or of benefit in Portland, or elsewhere in the world, to tell a story or introduce one of those issues for 5 minutes at the beginning of a Thursday meeting.  The topic could be from the past, present, or future, and could be a problem statement, a question,  a quandary, experience, reflection, new discovery, relevant poem, or recent book.

UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS AND DISCUSSION TOPICS:

        July 6th - Truth and Truth-telling - Martin Hesiler

THIRSTER SEMINAR SURVEY:

Please complete your survey by July 4th.    There are only three questions in the survey!   

Here is the link to the survey:

https://surveymonkey.com/tr/v1/te/akU_2BQc2vAhAsa_2B264x1g6_2FpF_2Fhy3EhxbpxJDHYpYZT3PErDK_2Bf6OjNYOPsqZdKwgXxaPkEXsqGoLikkWkXsCPfpNrhLur057jItJF_2FXwtiUDGVCKt2X_2FhlcA7zgrcu4KwIT3eVXxD9czYWzSIPWchBkdu4VAdUImqRs3zdvsbGodOjTlGGsMkyvZjlszvgLPKo4gkuzm6KUdVMZyWEnvWQ_3D_3D

THIRSTER MEETING LOCATION:  MCMENAMINS BROADWAY PUB, 1504 NE BROADWAY (AT NE 15TH AVE), PORTLAND, OR 97232.

    - Thirsters meetings start at 7 pm with discussions, ale, wine, and food, and may continue until 11 pm.

    - Presentations, if one is scheduled, start at 7:30 pm.

    - Topical, Data, or Open Discussions (when we don't have a presentation) start when Thirsters find themselves compelled, usually around 7 pm or shortly thereafter.

*INVITING VISITORS TO THIRSTER MEETINGS:   All Thirsters are encouraged to  invite colleagues, friends, and students to Thirster meetings.  If you invite someone who has not attended a meeting in the past, please inform them about the Thirster custom for paying for food and drink:  As you all know, instead of each Thirster paying the restaurant separately, we pay for food and drink by putting cash into a hat located on each table.  We then  pool the cash to pay for the McMenamin's bill.   Please ask the visitor to

bring enough cash for the hat to pay for their own food and drink (plus an 18% gratuity), and a little extra to cover the food provided to any presenter we may have.

*PITCHERS OF BEER OR ALE:  In the past there has been a long and strong tradition of purchasing pitchers of beer and ale for the Toping Tables.  However, In recent years the consumption of beer and ale has decreased and most Thirsters now prefer to order individual drinks of tea, wine, and beer.  Also, when pitchers of beer are ordered, we usually fail to cover the McMenamin's bill with the money contributed.  In the future, if a Thirster wishes to order a pitcher, that person should be prepared to pay for the entire pitcher.

IMPORTANT RESTROOM ANNOUNCEMENT:  The code to the Men's and Women’s bathrooms at the Broadway Pub have been changed to: 2288

THIRSTER DISCUSSION LIST:   This is an online discussion listserv where  Thirsters can exchange ideas.  Please contact John Dougherty at:  jdougherty-thirsters@earthlink.net if you want to join the Thirsters Discussion list.

As always, please suggest the names of speakers and/or discussion topics for future meetings; many Thursdays are available for speakers.  We also encourage Thirsters to come and talk to us about their work or other activities related to culture.

John Dougherty

Co-Coordinator

Semper Sitiens

Doc:Then and Now with a Montana Physician

   This post consists of a review of a book entitled Doc: Then and Now with a Montana Physician. It is authored by R.E. Losee, a country doctor who remarkably became a world-renowned orthopedist. John Badgley gave the book to me without comment or explanation. I suspect that he thought that I would identify with the author since both Losee and I are retired physicians. Importantly, the book appears to relate to John as much as it does to me. Both the author and John have a Montana connection, love the state, its geography and its people. Both John and Losee are similar in temperament, political inclinations and devotion to a secular based morality.

   The book is a memoir of a Montana physician, and Yale Medical School graduate.  The book describes the author’s conflicts with the medical establishment as he struggled to find the meaning of the title Doc., and more importantly, the meaning of his contemplated life. The book consists of an introductory chapter followed by a series of anecdotes describing the journey of a country doc to a world-renowned orthopedist. That his patients profited from his journey is in fact the important subtext of the book.

   The introductory chapter summarizes Losee’s medical education.  Unfortunately it is confusing with a time line that is indecipherable. This difficulty is probably attributable   to the vagaries of memory of an old man. Losee describes the inadequacy of his medical education, lamenting the failure of his training to prepare him for meaningful patient relationships, surrendering instead to scientific pursuits. His premedical education was at Dartmouth where he majored in chemistry. While at Dartmouth he memorized formulas, which were meaningless then and thereafter. His obituary states that his Dartmouth years were the worst of his life.  His medical education at Yale was equally disappointing.  Although he fails to describe his experiences at Yale, he states that he spent his life trying to forget the lessons learned at that august institution. Apparently the lessons were incompatible with his expectations of what it meant to be a doctor.  The   model of a doctor was based on the lives of his grandfather and great grandfather who practiced medicine when medicine was mainly a social pursuit, only to be displaced by the concept of medicine as a scientific endeavor. In 1910, Abraham Flexner wrote a report condemning American medical education, which was socially oriented and often taught by the apprenticeship method. He preached that medical education should be modeled after the German system, wherein teachers were the role models rather than doctors. The teaching of Medicine changed and would never be the same.

 Following his graduation from Yale, and after being denied an internship at Yale, he obtained an internship at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. He then headed west, to complete a rotating internship in Denver, Colorado, which once again denied him the opportunity to develop the skills that were pertinent to relationships with patients. He then completed his peripatetic across the country, eventuating in a practice in Ennis, a small l town in Montana, where he finally found himself and the meaning of his life. The subsequent narrative interweaves his experiences with patients   with his appreciation of the beauty and majesty of the Montana geography.

   The Montana anecdotes start with his experience as a general practitioner, stressing his experiences delivering babies and treating everyday maladies typical of a general practice. Almost imperceptibly, his medical practice changed from family practice to surgery and then an orthopedics.  He realized that his knowledge base in orthopedics was inadequate and thus threatened the lives of his patients. In response he returned to Montreal to further his internship in orthopedics. On return to Montana, we witnessed a gradual change in the nature of his practice. It became more scientific and technologically oriented. At one point, he experienced an epiphany that he had actually become a scientist. Consequently, he became interested in the mechanisms of disease and in particular of the unstable knee. This experience led to a life of scientific pursuit, eventuating in series of publications, attendance at scientific meetings and honorary lectures.  Although never board certified, he became an acknowledged authority on abnormalities of the knees, finally obtaining an honorary degree and the title of professor. Ironically, he discovered God when he realized that his skills alone were inadequate to achieve success for his patients. He describes how he prayed that an operation would go well.

The book ends with a reverie, reprising the meaning of the author’s life.  The subtitle of the book Then and Now with a Montana Physician implies that the author retuned to traditional practice, an implication that is misleading. The past was gone and what he experienced was not a return to former life, but simple nostalgia, nostalgia for his grandfather and great-grandfather and all they stood for.  There was no turning back. He was left with the title of Doc, an honorific obtained from grateful patients and their treasured memories.  The term encompassed respect and affection, and includes concepts of image building and image reception, The image is as much a creation of the adoring and needing patient, as it was imposed upon them by a sympathetic and occasionally manipulative physician. Times have changed and the needs of a public for a physician scientist, has superseded the needs for a loving, albeit limited knowledge based physician.  We cherish the loving healer, but need and revere the scientist, an important subtext that makes the book worth reading.

Posted by Arthur Banner