Amazing – was the only word they could use to describe his practice. he had a medicine for every ailment under the sky. his critics would argue that almost all doctors did, but his patients swore that he would consider the worst of the diseases they had as common ailments that everyone got, and therefore the cure also came from simple medicines (not that they knew simple from complex ones)- gelusil/milk of magnesia for the stomach, incidal/actifed for the cold, brufen for body pain and his personal favourite – crocin for , well, almost everything else.sometimes he even used alternative treatment measures like homeopathy or ayurveda. and he insisted on giving all the medicines himself, so his patients were spared the costs. oh, they loved him !!
the critics were also skeptical about whether all these treatments were according to accepted practices, coz no one had seen anything that suggested that he was indeed qualified,and well, he was so young!! they hesitated to go to the authorities because his popularity was immense, and besides, there was no reason to be afraid because none of the medicines he gave could be fatal or even produce any side effects, coz well, the beauty of his treatments lay in their simplicity. what was even more confounding was that almost all his patients were his peers, and it was only rarely that he gave medicines to older folk, in fact that was only when he knew that they had no other sources for treatment……
meanwhile, he had his own reasons for his ‘strange’ practice – the primary reason was that he loved the adulation, the way his peers looked upto him and relied on him to treat them. and to be fair to him, he also didnt like to see anyone suffering.
he would have loved to continue this forever, but he had his share of problems, mainly two- one was that his sources were secret,and couldnt be expected to last forever and two, his parents didnt approve of this. in fact he had been severely reprimanded at least a couple of times. he was told that he was dealing with human life here, and if something happened to his patients, he would be held responsible, but he was confident.
he had already understood it took a lot to become a great doctor, and judging from his patients’ reaction, he was already on the way.
this went on for two years, and then unfortunately, he had to move on to a different place, a place where he couldnt practice.
Amazing was the only way i could describe the practice, because the critics were right- i was only in primary school and still had more than a decade to go before i could make a career choice on whether to become a doctor or not.
until next time, practise ……
