The
Gallbladder Story
(ABOUT HANDS SOAKED IN BILE)
(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!
