Word: medicant
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These decisions are more brutal than those of a medic in combat, who must quickly decide who to treat on the basis of chances for recovery. Doctors frequently call for some broad standard to help them make these choices, but any guidelines turn out to be callous and dehumanizing. Who do you save, a father of four or a brilliant scientist? And what if a patient expresses a desire to die: is a cooperative doctor aiding a suicide? Disagreement with the patient, relatives and colleagues forces the physician to make these decisions alone and stand by them. In the absence...
...piece of bone about eight inches long had split off and jammed into my groin. I landed near some paddies 50 miles south of Hanoi. About 15 villagers jumped me and tore off all my clothes except my shorts. Then they saw my leg. In about five minutes a medic came, gave me a shot and made a splint out of a banana tree. They put me in a fish net and started carrying me-when the planes came...
...sometimes disguises himself in Bedouin robes and roams the city at night to see if his people are behaving properly. One time he appeared at Tripoli's Central Hospital and, to test the institution's efficiency, pretended that his father desperately needed a doctor. When a Taiwanese medic blithely suggested that a few aspirin would suffice, Gaddafi stripped off his robe and denounced the doctor: "You will regret that decision all your life." The doctor was fired...
There are, of course, many other deserters and draft dodgers who want to come home now that the war has ended, but they do not dare face the risks. One Green Beret medic who deserted Army training at Fort Bragg, N.C., four years ago was arrested and was being court-martialed when he escaped and made his way to Sweden. Last summer he arrived in Canada with another American expatriate whom he had married in Stockholm. Now he wants to return to the U.S. "I have a feeling for the U.S. and the future," he says...
...youngsters who died that evening was called "Doc." No one remembered his full name; because he was a medic, they had all called him Doc, and that was good enough. He had crawled out into the enemy's field of fire to drag one of the wounded into the hedgerow that was shielding the company, and he was killed by a burst from an AK-47. Men rarely cry in a spot like that, but some of them did then. That is how much they loved...