Curiosity

Smartphones are not allowed for candidates in our professional examination. The same rule applies for the examiners, who are supposed to switch off or silence the device, in case of being distracted like Pavlov's dog to that ping! in the middle of examination.

It was already three thirty in the afternoon; I had examined more than ten candidates sitting for the membership examination, and my energy - that of the sweaty candidates, too - was nearly burned out, when I took a sheepish glance at my smartphone. There was an interesting email from a medical student. A curious student asked me why I had cast doubt on giving morphine to patient suffering from heart attack.

"Largely an old wives' tale in the era of dogmatic medicine," I'd previously taught him. Conforming doctors have used the word classical teaching with romantic promiscuity. We have been handed a long list of we-must-believe dogmas, to be strictly followed without asking why. Watch what happens when we exercise our curiosity, investigate and seek after new evidence, and think again. The myth of morphine in myocardial infarction, for example, will be debunked.

 If we are to follow the time-honoured advice, it will be that of Sir William Osler who cautioned that "the greatest enemy to the scientific practice of medicine is the practice of the routine."