Soundings: Passing out parade

I wrote one myself once, when a friend of more than 30 years drowned on holiday, in high summer and at the peak of his formidable powers. Most aren't like that. They tell of longer lives: of careers—whether glorious, dutiful, or just humdrum—that went the distance; of retirements enriched by strange pastimes; and of final illnesses. They remind us we must die. But they are also vivifying. Each week offers a gallery of portraits of lives mostly unknown until over. And the pleasures they elicit are not voyeuristic, but those of the vast enjoyable diversity of our profession, and of our common humanity. Even colleagues we thought we knew quite well surprise us when they are gone. A modest and kindly obstetrician, later a dean, is posthumously revealed as a wartime hero, a ship's doctor imperturbable on a burning destroyer. Thus his Distinguished Service Cross is explained, along with his calm, wry management of the worst that any faculty committee could throw at him. And a more peppery senior colleague can be forgiven a little now that the details of a sadly deprived childhood (Eton, also during the war) have surfaced. But it is the strangers who intrigue us most: the aspiring actuary who switched to medicine, practised in the wilds of Canada, and trained as a pilot (fixed wing and helicopter); the paediatrician who made Calman reforms work “through his effective mix of lucidity, assertiveness, and humour,” and in his retirement composed a guitar concerto; and the psychiatrist who pioneered home treatment for patients with severe mental illness, “and thought nothing of helping them with their housework while conducting expert psychiatric assessment.” Three brief lives, all from one batch of BMJ obituaries (BMJ 2001;323:696), with so many more to relish over the years. They are our folklore, our collective memory, our most dignified of gossip columns, and—for those of us for whom the appeal of the job advertisements has long faded—a treat to look forward to each week. Now, like a lot else in the BMJ, obituaries have changed: more and shorter, with longer versions on the website for those who wish further details. I have only one further suggestion. They offer so much that their role in our professional development should now be properly recognised: by a modest award—to be claimed on visiting and perusing the website—of CME points.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.