Opinion: What a century-old painting taught me about being present as a physician today
I was clearing out old files not long ago and came across a copy of “The Doctor,” a painting by Samuel Luke Fildes that hangs in the Tate museum in London. As a moment caught in time, the painting depicts a physician at a child’s bedside during a house call near the end of the 1800s. With the child in crisis, the parents look at the doctor as he studies the child.
During my years as a pediatrician, this painting has crossed my desk and screen numerous times. It is often used in lectures and presentations to elicit feelings of nostalgia in the face of a changing health care landscape. In other circumstances it has been held up as evidence of the physician paternalism that defined the doctor-patient relationship through the 20th century.
