All animals are strictly dry
They sinless live and swiftly die
But sinful, ginful, rum-soaked men
Survive for three score and ten.

Anon.

The leading medical journal of the world, The Lancet, has decided to devote half a page, beginning this month in every weekly issue for poets to air their medical views. Man may have to learn a lesson or two from his surroundings about health tips. Animals live in Nature in fine tune with all other creatures, except man who makes it difficult for other species to live in peace. Wrote Allan Porter in his book, The God’s Fools, " man with his proclivity for comfort and his greed will eventually destroy all other resources of Nature". How true! May be poetry will bring back human qualities to man.
Even the Orangutan ( translated it means- wild man of the woods ) does not seem to be as cruel to his tribe as man could be. Aristotle was very systematic in classifying man as an animal. He arranged living things according to their degree of perfection, with God at the top and man half way down there. I strongly feel that man may go up a step or two by living with poetry. Lamarck and Darwin in the nineteenth century, with their theory of evolution did link man with monkeys, in contradistinction to the creationists of the Middle Ages. Sankya philosophers did say that man can elevate himself to the level of God by his own good deeds- may I add poetry being one such good deed.
Sitting there in the meeting in the midst of all the poets, I almost forgot my earthly problems ; to cap it Mrs. Loyola Lobo Prabhu, an accomplished poetess herself, wrote a poem on me which I thought was very good indeed. I personally feel that any language should be flexible to help man express his inner feelings. Grammar and rules should be brought down to the minimum so that more and more people could indulge in this luxury of opening their hearts to others. Poetry is the best medium to express your heart’s contents. What is grammar after all ? "Grammars and dictionaries exist to record usage, not to determine it, " was the firm opinion of Professor Nogel Vincent, of the Cambridge University ( emphasis mine ).
Medical writings, of late, have become very scientific in that they have lost the charm of even the good prose that used to be the style in the good old days. Most medical writings these days follow the IMRAD ( Introduction, Material methods,Results and Discussion ) English according to Dr. Waldron, the editor of the Annals of Occupational Hygiene in London.The increased use of computers and computer English, the charm of the olden day’s prose is dying out in medical literature. Francis Crick writes in one of his pieces that " There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than an average scientific paper ". I could not agree more. I only hope that poetry will be introduced in scientific writings to avoid this boredom.
As I am writing this I received a booklet " A Flame in Sunlight ", an anthology of poems written by a civil servant, Mr. Sreekumar I.R.S, our deputy commissioner of excise . Coming as it is from a civil servant, I was thrilled to see the variety and the beauty in his poems bringing to mind the famous lines in the Gray’s Elegy " Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear." May his tribe increase.
Medically speaking poetry is a good material to analyze the mind of the poet. I think it is a very good asset in assessing the mental make up of the poet when he comes for a medical check up. We are told by Sir James Spence, a great brain in medicine, that the " diseases present through the personality of the patient ". Poetry, therefore, could be an aid in medical diagnosis when it comes to illness in poets. Some people write in frustration, some in agony, some in ecstasy, yet others in deep love, some in anger, many of them pour out their sorrow in their poetry giving the diagnosing mind enough food for thought; before venturing on the future course of action. Medical world can thus get benefit from poetry in both ways. Poetry can make medical writings more interesting to read and it can be a boon in diagnosing correctly the illness of the poet. Finally as Coleridge had shown, poetry could be one of the tools in therapeutics. I can not think of any other human endeavour which can help physicians like poetry. Long live the poets and their poetry.

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