Even though medical science has galloped at an overwhelming speed eventually increasing the average life span of an individual, there seems to be reason enough to worry about one’s health as the ailing are at the receiving end and have to empty their pockets over medicines and diagnostics which are selling at highly inflated prices. I am out to wonder whether these novel medicines and diagnostic facilities that hit the market every other week are actually needed to treat a person who is sick or is it the working of the capitalist stream to stock up enough dough that would last for a couple of centuries. Well, by all comparisons, getting yourself “doctored” is an expensive affair these days and it is the lower and middle class people who are bearing the brunt of it all.
Now, let me draw a brief word sketch of what medical treatment meant a decade or two ago in our state of Jammu and Kashmir. I fell sick when I was a teenager and my father took me to a doctor to check what was wrong. I had a very sore throat and consistent fever. We had to wait for our turn outside the doctor’s clinic and all the time, my father kept a damp cloth on my forehead to help my body temperature drop. Finally I was “summoned” by a sketch of a man (he was so frail I thought if I touched him he would fall into a heap of bones) who was the clinic’s caretaker. We went inside the doctor’s cabin and the doctor greeted me with a smile. He, in fact, got up from his seat when he saw my father almost dragging me into the cabin. In a very sweet voice, he asked me my name and then checked my pulse. My father had just started telling him about my sickness when the doctor grabbed his prescription pad and started jotting down. He showed my father the doses for the very few medicines he had prescribed and said that I should rest for a few days till the fever got better. No scans, no lab tests, nothing sir. All that the doctor said while we were leaving was “take care son,” in a very soft voice. I nodded my head. That was it. We left the clinic, bought the medicines from the druggist and took a rickshaw home. I had the medicines as per the prescription and the next day when I woke up, the fever was gone and my throat was much better. A couple of days more and I was as fine as I could ever be. The whole affair about the medical check-up and the decent and prompt recovery appeared “angelic” to me. Just by checking my pulse, the doctor knew what was wrong with me and his diagnosis was almost absolutely perfect.
Some 200 metres away from our home, there was a druggist, very frail yet diligent. Whenever people in the area fell sick, they would go to this druggist, tell him about their problems and he would give them medicines. He was not a doctor but he had something that a doctor should have – the power to facilitate healing. No prescriptions and certainly no tests; he would give you a couple of white coloured tablets that all seemed alike whether you were having a headache, a fever or something more serious. And people were cured almost instantly after taking these medicines. There used to be one such person in every locality of Srinagar and the adjoining districts.
There was an old faith healer in the old city who was approached by a large number of sick and ailing people for treatment every day. This healer would not speak while you mentioned your ailment briefly. He would just wave his hand suggesting that you should go. The moment one left the house of this saint, one start feeling better and within a short period of time, the ailment was gone. He had no medical arsenal in his house and did not prescribe medicines. He created miracles in the art of healing.
Over the years, the social scene in Kashmir has been such that people have almost stopped believing in faith healing and prefer to see a doctor who has enough letters flanking his name to spell out his acumens in terms of degrees earned. The diligent druggists have also eroded from the scene. And when you see a doctor with enough letters flanking his name, you ought to know you are in for a cargo purchase of drugs, analytics and more. These doctors have so many patients queued up that they hardly manage to see a patient for more than a minute or two. During this time, what such doctors do is that they write you a scroll of a prescription and tell you to get a dozen or more tests conducted and then report back with the lab report. The analytics are very costly and most of them have no direct relationship with your disease, or so I have witnessed. Along come a baker’s dozen of drugs which you have to take for practically your entire life. Now the tests are done, the doctor sees the report (barely) and cancels out some drugs and adds other affluent ones to your list and asks you to consult after a week’s time. As for getting treated, I am not really sure for I have seen almost more than forty doctors for my various ailments (I am getting old and you should know that) but not even once did a diagnosis click as the right one. I figure it is the same for almost all the people I happen to know. A good chunk of your earnings goes into medicines and diagnostics every month if you are not keeping well or are hit by aging.
So, what can one say about the medical scene today. Well, I guess we are “lab rats” who have to pay to check out the efficiency of drugs and medical paraphernalia.
