Doctor-Patient Relations

“Part Three: The Patient Examines the Doctor” is essentially an indictment of the aloofness doctors assume when treating the critically ill. Throughout Intoxicated By My Illness, Anatole Broyard critiques the modern doctor-patient relationship. Broyard wants doctors to share more of themselves with their patient, entering into a healing relationship in which both parties are mutually trusted and respected.

The central problem the Broyard has with both of his urologists is that they are too nondescript and do not have conversations with him: they are silent, effective, and entirely impersonal medical machines. He gives one Kafkaesque description of a group of doctors at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in the opening paragraph of the essay recounting:

“I had a very curious relationship with the doctors. They came in groups of six. They seemed to be attached to each other like Siamese sextuplets. They looked at me. They...