In Memoriam

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law—
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

This line from Tennyson's In Memoriam, A.H.H. is in reference to evolution. And the doctor's lounge has met the ultimate evolutionary fate: insignificance. The demise of the doctor's lounge, to my surprise, has been chronicled elsewhere. These postmortems are adequate enough, and I couldn't expound much upon them. There's even a book.

In those early hospitals — the Valetudinaria, for example, places where the Romans housed wounded soldiers — I am certain there was cold coffee at 2 PM, stuffy leather chairs, the Wall Street Journal, and if not March Madness on the television, then someone hopefully watching the stock ticker mindlessly. Gone now are the curbside consults, a place in the corner where one could catch a nap, the morning fruit and bagels.

But what happened? These former bastions of (mostly) male workplace country clubs — doctors only, centers of camaraderie, security-coded doors, shelves lined with incomplete charts waiting for the tardy culprit to sign the little stickies.

My answer: the Libby Zion case.

...to be continued.