Guest Post from Dr. Keith Kaplan: Why Pathology?

The following post appeared yesterday in Dr. Keith Kaplan's Digital Pathology Blog. I thought the message was important enough to re-post it here:“What animates a great pathologist? Is it the desire to cure disease, to save life? Surely not, save perhaps as an afterthought. He is too intelligent, deep in his soul, to see anything praiseworthy in such a desire. He knows from life-long observation that his discoveries will do quite as much harm as good, that a thousand scoundrels will profit to every honest man, that the folks who most deserve to be saved will probably be the last to be saved. … What actually moves him is his unquenchable curiosity—his boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before.”— H. L. MenckenWhy did I choose pathology?  Why does anyone choose pathology as a medical specialty?Keith Kaplan, MDSome of my thoughts on this were previously shared in “What a Beautiful Sea of Granulomas” this summer.For me it was about the sense of discovery, the sense of making the unknown, known and helping people through the right diagnosis for the right treatment. As H.L. Mencken puts it, “to find out what has not been found out before”.Why did you choose pathology?  What are your frustrations?  Would you choose medicine as a career now and would you still choose pathology? – Contact me or comment with your thoughts.In medical scho...
Source: neuropathology blog - Category: Pathologists Tags: general pathology Source Type: blogs