No, Mark Twain didn't say (or write) this. But since whoever did is unlikely to be as interesting as Twain, I won't go to the trouble of finding out who the quipper actually was.
I'm sitting in the C terminal of Boston's Logan airport waiting on a straight shot Virgin America flight to SFO. Not that the weather is bad, 10 days of cartoon sunshine according to weather.com - which could mean anything.
I spent the last hour in the Legal Seafoods restaurant watching World Cup, drinking a fresh Boston Lager with a bowl of clam chowder and a half dozen fresh east coast oysters completing my culinary farewell to New England. My guess is that the west coast can and will answer in kind. Probably with crab stew in a sourdough bowl with an Anchor Steam. Predictable, but respectable. Should be a good fight.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I am going to be present at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil even if I have to sell a kidney to do it.
On Thursday I had my first day of rotation specific orientation, internal medicine in my case. Luckily when the preliminary pimping began, it was over a medical subject that I happen to excel as compared to my peers, random historical medical trivia - subcategory: illicit drug related.
They showed us this picture, a portrait of 4 founding fathers of medicine painted by John Singer Sargent. After reading us a venerable quote they asked who the speaker was. Not knowing the quote, but realizing I was in the company of Internists, I hazarded "Osler", meaning Sir William Osler the Abe Lincoln, Santa Claus, Dumbledore of Internal Medicine. Then they asked, "Now who is this gentleman lurking in the shadows?" This I knew, "Halsted", referring to William Stewart Halsted, the father of modern american surgery and who incidentally introduced the practice of wearing gloves during surgery not for asepsis but because his assistant (and wife)'s hands were irritated by the insane scrubbing routine which involved something like burning your fingertips off with carbolic acid. "And why is it appropriate that he's back there in the dark?" Anyway, I knew what they wanted to hear, and frankly what I thought was hilarious to say on my first day as fake doctor, and spoke up "because of his raging cocaine addiction"
An auspicious beginning...
1 comment:
Uncle Johns?
Post a Comment