Wednesday, September 21, 2011

The Gallbladder Story


The Gallbladder Story
(ABOUT HANDS SOAKED IN BILE)


I learn that gall is the bitterness of feeling and exasperation.

In three years I have seen more than a thousand gallbladders removed from the diseased. I wonder if the fetish of our surgery department with the sacrifice of this pear-shaped organ matches the fecundity of the ever-increasing incidence of indisposition of this reliquary of bile, with the said prolificacy being generously abetted by the radiologist’s acumen.

I have been reading about Middle Age theories about humors or vital fluids of human body, of which excesses of two- yellow bile and black bile, were supposed to cause aggression and depression and I feel like distancing myself from the present day evidence-based thinking and going back into the above-mentioned times, particularly for this subject, and propose a corollary that the rise in hostility and melancholy in our society is responsible for the inimical increase in gallbladder diseases!  

And thus the blade of the surgeon is still at work, in full fervor, ever-busy in executing gallbladders and thus his hands are soaked in bile! One can only ask to soak no more!



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