Richard Selzer
Richard Selzer
Allen Richard Selzerwas an American surgeon and author...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
doctors might people perhaps understood
If people understood that doctors weren't divine, perhaps the odor of malpractice might diminish.
flower technology medicine
Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine.
dream brain doe
The surgeon knows all the parts of the brain but he does not know his patient's dreams.
taken wine earth
Thus is the fruit of the Earth taken, its flesh torn. Thus is it given over standing, toward rot. It is the principle of corruption, the death of what is, the birth of what is to be. You are wine.
echoes agony giving
You do not die all at once. Some tissues live on for minutes, even hours, giving still their little cellular shrieks, molecular echoes of the agony of the whole corpus.
life sea names
Each is like a river that leaves behind its name and shape, the whole course of its path , to vanish into the vast sea of God.
soul body scar
And If the surgeon is like a poet, then the scars you have made on countless bodies are like verses into the fashioning of which you have poured your soul.
heart cages theater
The heart is pure theater throbbing in its cage palpably as any nightingale.
giving facts autopsy
Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth.
doctors done operations
A minor operation is one that is done on someone else
healthy alive body
I contemplate the body, dead and diseased as well as alive and healthy.