Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

— Carl Jung

“And what is the use of a book, thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?”

**
“Narrative medicine” is a branch of medicine that deals with narrative competence. Narrative competence is defined by Rita Charon as, “the ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others”. Though primarily defined to improve the doctor-patient relationship, a “good story” or a narration is also a powerful and effective way of learning medicine.

It is well known, that “stories” and “art” help a person remember better compared to plain text. The famous idiom:

A picture is worth a thousand words

has stood the test of time. We have modified this adage to say:

A story is worth a thousand pages of a text

The “naïve realism” of any healthy person who has not been an inmate of a lunatic asylum or a pupil of the idealist philosophers consists in the view that things, the environment, the world, exist independently of our sensation, of our consciousness, of our self and of man in general.

Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imaged, and that the latter exists independently of that which images it. Materialism deliberately makes the “naïve” belief of mankind the foundation of its theory of knowledge.

— Materialism and Empirio-criticism, by Vladimir Lenin

Perceptual (especially visual) illusions are often used to prove the fallibility of our senses and how unreliable they are in our search for the truth. But the very fact that we address them as "illusions" indicates our ability to recognize that there's something more truthful beyond this illusion; in other words, since we're able to perceive both the illusory aspect of these visual illusions and then, after some effort, we can also see the so-called "reality" of it, this tells us that the so-called "illusion" is not merely a veil or a distraction. Rather, it's a fundamental trait and an aspect of the very thing being perceived; a different face, another point of view of the thing.

The most succinct counter-argument to all idealistic philosophy:

أَتَيْتُ بِمَنْطِقِ الْعَرَبِ الْأَصِيلِ
وَكَانَ بِقَدْرِ مَا عَايَنْتُ قِيلِي

فَعَارَضَهُ كَلَامٌ كَانَ مِنْهُ
بِمَنْزِلَةِ النِّسَاءِ مِنَ الْبُعُولِ

وَهَذَا الدُّرُّ مَأْمُونُ التَّشَظِّي
وَأَنْتَ السَّيْفُ مَأْمُونُ الْفُلُولِ

وَلَيْسَ يَصِحُّ فِي الْأَفْهَامِ شَيْءٌ
إِذَا احْتَاجَ النَّهَارُ إِلَى دَلِيلِ

— أبو الطيب المتنبي

قصة هذه الأبيات:

قال أبو الطيب وقد حضر مجلس سيف الدولة وبين يديه أتْرُجٌّ وطَلْعٌ وهو يمتحن الفرسان، فقال ابن حبيش: لا تتوهم، هذا للشرب، فقال أبو الطيب:
شَدِيدُ الْبُعْدِ مِنْ شُرْبِ الشَّمُولِ
تُرُنْجُ الْهِنْدِ أَوْ طَلْعُ النَّخِيلِ

وَلَكِنْ كُلُّ شَيْءٍ فِيهِ طِيبٌ
لَدَيْكَ مِنَ الدَّقِيقِ إِلَى الْجَلِيلِ

وَمَيْدَانُ الْفَصَاحَةِ وَالْقَوَافِي
وَمُمْتَحَنُ الْفَوَارِسِ وَالْخُيُولِ

فأنكر عليه بعض الحاضرين قوله، فقال:
أَتَيْتُ بِمَنْطِقِ الْعَرَبِ الْأَصِيلِ
وَكَانَ بِقَدْرِ مَا عَايَنْتُ قِيلِي

فَعَارَضَهُ كَلَامٌ كَانَ مِنْهُ
بِمَنْزِلَةِ النِّسَاءِ مِنَ الْبُعُولِ

وَهَذَا الدُّرُّ مَأْمُونُ التَّشَظِّي
وَأَنْتَ السَّيْفُ مَأْمُونُ الْفُلُولِ

وَلَيْسَ يَصِحُّ فِي الْأَفْهَامِ شَيْءٌ
إِذَا احْتَاجَ النَّهَارُ إِلَى دَلِيلِ

يكلك فد يوم راح المتنبي لمجلس سيف الدولة وشاف عنده أَترُج وطَلع النخيل، وثنينهن جانن مزة ياكلوها وية الشرب، بس مع ذلك، ما راد يسيء الظن بسيف الدولة. فأثناء ما هو كاعد يمه، واحد من الحاضرين كله: لا تتوهم، ترة هاي علمود الشرب... هنا أبو الطيب رد عليهم بهاي الأبيات بس همين ما سكتوا، ف رد عليهم بالأبيات اللي مطلعها "أتيتُ بمَنطِقِ العربِ الأصيلِ..."

الشَّمول: إسمٌ للخمر.
تُرُنج، أو الأترُج: نوع من الحمضيات (يسمونه بالعامية كبّاد، طرنج).
قِيلي: قَولي.

The Lovers,
By Émile Friant

By David Dubnitskiy

Careful studies have shown, for example, that heart attack patients undergoing cardiac balloon therapy should have it done within ninety minutes of arrival at a hospital. After that, survival falls off sharply. In practical terms this means that, within ninety minutes, medical teams must complete all their testing for every patient who turns up in an emergency room with chest pain, make a correct diagnosis and plan, discuss the decision with the patient, obtain his or her agreement to proceed, confirm there are no allergies or medical problems that have to be accounted for, ready a cath lab and team, transport the patient, and get started.

What is the likelihood that all this will actually occur within ninety minutes in an average hospital? In 2006, it was less than 50 percent.
This is not an unusual example. These kinds of failures are routine in medicine. Studies have found that at least 30 percent of patients with stroke receive incomplete or inappropriate care from their doctors, as do 45 percent of patients with asthma and 60 percent of patients with pneumonia.
Getting the steps right is proving brutally hard, even if you know them.

Such failures carry an emotional valence that seems to cloud how we think about them. Failures of ignorance we can forgive. If the knowledge of the best thing to do in a given situation does not exist, we are happy to have people simply make their best effort. But if the knowledge exists and is not applied correctly, it is difficult not to be infuriated. What do you mean half of heart attack patients don’t get their treatment on time? What do you mean that two-thirds of death penalty cases are overturned because of errors? It is not for nothing that the philosophers gave these failures so unmerciful a name—ineptitude. Those on the receiving end use other words, like negligence or even heartlessness.

I have been trying for some time to understand the source of our greatest difficulties and stresses in medicine. It is not money or government or the threat of malpractice lawsuits or insurance company hassles—although they all play their role. It is the complexity that science has dropped upon us and the enormous strains we are encountering in making good on its promise.
The problem is not uniquely American; I have seen it everywhere—in Europe, in Asia, in rich countries and poor. Moreover, I have found to my surprise that the challenge is not limited to medicine.