Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Care of the patient - the primary duty of a doctor


                         Care of the patient - the primary duty of a doctor


Nagarjuna, the famous teacher of Ayurveda needed an assistant for preparation of medicines. He called two of his students and giving them some herbs, asked them to prepare medicine from them and bring it to him in two days.
Both of them went away. After two days, one of them returned empty handed and the other with medicine. The first one apologized for not preparing the medicine within the stipulated time as he was busy taking care of a sick old man for two days whom he found on the way going back home. So he asked for two more days to prepare the medicine.
The second one immediately said that he too faced a lot of problems. His mother was running high temperature. His father and brother were also ill and could not go to work even. Ignoring all these, he put all his efforts only in preparing the medicine for two days as stipulated.
Nagarjuna sent away the second one and took the first one as his assistant telling that the medicine is prepared only for the patient. The fore most duty of a doctor is to take care of the patient. If the patient is not there, medicine has no value.

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