This poem is useful in considering how physicians and other caregivers feel about interacting with hateful patients and where the limits of professional responsibility lie. The speaker is a physician who is examining a bigoted patient. As the patient maligns Welshmen, Jews, and liberals – all of which the doctor in fact is – the physician imagines prescribing deadly drugs. But “I prescribed for him / as if he were my brother.” The poem ends: “later that night I must have slept / on my arm: momentarily / my right hand lost its cunning.” These last lines are provocative – during the night, without conscious volition, the doctor’s instrument – his hand – has lost its efficacy. Why?
On the one hand, if the doctor is physically unable to treat, then he is not responsible for withholding treatment. On the other hand, by being rendered professionally helpless, perhaps he is being punished for not taking a moral stance against his patient. This interpretation seems to have validity because the last line recalls Psalm 137, which warns, “If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.”
For drawing attention to the biblical reference, I am grateful to Dr. Danielle Ofri (clinical professor) and Lara DeLong (Class of 2001), both at NYU School of Medicine. Dannie Abse (1923-2014) was a practicing physician and poet.
Reading by Dannie Abse
Case History
‘Most Welshmen are worthless,
an inferior breed, doctor.’
He did not know I was Welsh.
Then he praised the architects
of the German death-camps–
did not know I was a Jew.
He called liberals, ‘White blacks’,
and continued to invent curses.
When I palpated his liver
I felt the soft liver of Goering;
when I lifted my stethoscope
I heard the heartbeats of Himmler;
when I read his encephalograph
I thought, ‘Sieg heil, mein Fuhrer.’
In the clinic’s dispensary
red berry of black bryony,
cowbane, deadly nightshade, deathcap.
Yet I prescribed for him
as if he were my brother.
Later that night I must have slept
on my arm: momentarily
my right hand lost its cunning.
Commentary
“Sometimes it’s very difficult to like some patients. Patients imagine that they’re always likable, but in fact there are some one has great difficulty with, I think. And indeed there was one patient that bugged me so sufficiently that I wrote two poems about him.”
A previous version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database.
Web image created by Medhum.org
