Bernard Shaw and his lethally absurd doctor's dilemma . Archer had claimed that GBS could not be regarded as a supreme dramatist until he had written a tragedy involving . Shaw responded by writing an extravagant burlesque, which carried his cast of medicine men to the verge of farce, making them more vivid than real doctors yet recognisable as comic characters in the medical profession. Then he added a subtitle to the play: . In his opinion, the medical service in Britain at the beginning of the 2. It was not reasonable, he argued, to expect doctors in private practice to be impartial when confronted by a strong pecuniary interest. Since we all come under their attentions at some time in our lives, we are tempted to impose on them an infallibility that camouflages their ignorance. The blind trust that many Victorians and Edwardians had in competitive private doctors protected them from unbearable mistrust and anxiety ? It was the philosophy of the placebo. When your child is ill or your wife dying. The Doctor's Dilemma was Caron's last film under her MGM contract. He had starred in a series of popular British comedies about a young doctor. Some of the forty had young wives and helpless children. Preceding the 105-page text of The Doctor's Dilemma, G. Shaw intruded his 79-page polemic. Downloads: 5284 Pages. With death lingering in the life of a young college student diagnosed with cancer. This the doctor brings you. You have a wildly urgent feeling that something must be done; and the doctor does something. Sometimes what he does kills the patient. Unfortunately, this social solution was considered too expensive by politicians. Shaw looked forward to a time when doctors as competitive tradesmen were replaced by a medical profession that had been brought under responsible and effective public control. Until this body of men and women were . In other words, he was looking forward to the creation of a National Health Service. He already saw hopeful signs of this happening when he wrote The Doctor's Dilemma. In 1. 90. 9 Beatrice Webb was to publish her minority report to the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, which contained a collectivist scheme that amounted to a blueprint for the welfare state. Shaw recognised this as an important document that would make a significant difference in sociology and political science. Our taxes were an investment in our health, and anyone who evaded such a tax would be seen as an enemy of the people. Shaw's opinions on municipal politics and public health at the turn of the century were formed and sharpened by his years as a vestryman and borough councillor for the St Pancras district of London. He campaigned for women to be legally entitled to serve on metropolitan boroughs, fought against reckless borrowing from the banks and attempted to change the rating system so that it fell more heavily on the idle rich (whom he called . He was particularly active on the health committee, visiting hospitals, sweatshops and the homes of the poor where he saw under- nourishment, destitution and disease. He mocked the confusing jargon and circumlocution of physicians and he pressed for the re- examination by the London School of Economics of untrustworthy medical statistics. Some of his recommendations, such as the danger of alcohol and the wisdom of vegetarianism, are as uninvitingly valid now as they were over a hundred years ago, and some of his indictments (against cowpox vaccination, for example), which had some validity in the late 1. But his horror at the practice of vivisection is particularly relevant today, after the last government's manifesto pledge to reduce it was laid aside and the importation of more animals to Britain for experimentation has recently been advocated on financial grounds. As a seasoned political campaigner, Shaw knew that each battle won would have to be re- fought in the future, and he would have been particularly scathing about any move to extend privatisation into the health service . The picturesque brigands of the Sierra Nevada in Act III of Man and Superman are holding what appears to be a St Pancras vestry meeting. The municipal characters in Getting Married owe their existence to the borough councillors with whom he had spent so many unventilated hours. And the conflicting opinions of the medical specialists he met on the health committee are made into a wonderfully orchestrated theatrical entertainment in Act I of The Doctor's Dilemma as the doctors gather in Sir Colenso Ridgeon's consulting room to congratulate him on his knighthood. This successful 5. Almroth Wright, who had been knighted shortly before The Doctor's Dilemma was written. Shaw sensed there was something dubious about Wright's high reputation (he was later nicknamed Sir Almost Right). In 1. 90. 5, when Wright sent him a pamphlet on anti- thyroid inoculation with an invitation to discuss it in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, Shaw accepted the invitation but challenged the validity of his vaccine treatments. So began a long series of fierce debates between the two men. This gave Shaw an opportunity to use his dialectical brilliance to undermine the presumed authority of doctors over matters of life and death . Shaw then asked what would happen if more people applied for treatment than could properly be looked after, and Wright answered: . Shaw himself believed that we should not seek to outlive our natural lives. He would have been appalled by cases of people being kept clinically alive for long periods, such as Ariel Sharon, still held up at the border post between life and death. It followed that suicide and properly controlled assisted suicide should be brought within the law. Unlike Bloomfield Bonington, Ridgeon cannot make an objective medical decision because he is not at all well. We are being presented with a circus of Shavian lovesickness. Ridgeon loves Jennifer, who loves her husband Dubedat, who loves himself, while the doctors who surround him love their profession. All of them deceive themselves. Paediatr Child Health Vol 13 No 6 July/August 2008 487 Medically unexplained symptoms in young people: The doctor’s dilemma Rose Geist MD1, Michael Weinstein MD1. The Doctor's Dilemma is a 1958 British comedy drama film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Leslie Caron, Dirk Bogarde, Alastair Sim, Robert Morley and Terence. The Doctor's DilemmaThe Project Gutenberg EBook of The Doctor's Dilemma, by George Bernard Shaw #30 in our series by George Bernard Shaw Copyrig. You were a very lucky young man.'The day I graduated from medical school. Donald Trump's Russia Dilemma; View All Features. THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA Suspend your disbelief and imagine the following miracle to have occurred: A young doctor working in a hospital discovers that he. The idealism of love fills the play; the lure of money animates the preface. The other is a woman. The first two acts of the play, deftly edited and played fast, are among the best comic drama Shaw wrote. The difficulty begins in Dubedat's studio in Act III, as it does in many scenes that introduce one of Shaw's artistic young men . Fortunately, Dubedat is saved from sentimentality by a comprehensive amorality that is akin in some respects to that of Shaw's best virtuoso characters, such as Billy Dunn the philosophical burglar in Heartbreak House and the millionaire dustman Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion. The part of Louis Dubedat was written for Harley Granville Barker, who played the death scene in the first production at the Royal Court Theatre so realistically that some of the audience were shocked and became tearful. A similarly soft interpretation today would be more likely to provoke tears of laughter (as Oscar Wilde believed the death of Little Nell must do among modern readers). A more rewarding forerunner perhaps was a production at the Mermaid Theatre in 1. Kenneth Cranham as a forceful Dubedat opposite Lynn Farleigh's Jennifer, played not as a relentlessly naive and tragic heroine but as a wife who treats her husband as an exciting possession. This made the pair into a partnership of confidence tricksters just right for modern comedy. Shaw could write tragedy: Saint Joan, Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah and Too True to Be Good are all tragedies. But if he had really intended The Doctor's Dilemma to be a tragedy, he would have made the doctors in the title plural and damned the whole profession. The Doctor's Dilemma (play) - Wikipedia. The Doctor's Dilemma is a play by George Bernard Shaw first staged in 1. It is a problem play about the moral dilemmas created by limited medical resources, and the conflicts between the demands of private medicine as a business and a vocation. Characters. However, his private medical practice, with limited staff and resources, can only treat ten patients at a time. From a selection of fifty patients he has selected ten he believes he can cure and who, he believes, are most worthy of being saved. However, when he is approached by a young woman, Jennifer Dubedat, with a deadly ill husband, Louis Dubedat, he admits he can, at a stretch, save one more patient, but that the individual in question must be shown to be most worthy of being saved. However, the situation is complicated when an old friend and colleague reveals, he too, needs treatment. Sir Colenso must choose which patient he will save: a kindly, altruistic poor medical colleague, or an extremely gifted but also very unpleasant, womaniser, bigamist and amoral young artist. Sir Colenso falls instantly in love with the young and vivacious Mrs Dubedat and this makes it even harder for the doctor to separate his motives for the decision of who shall live. Preface. This did not benefit any of his patients but made the surgeon a great deal of money. Shaw credits Almroth Wright as the source of his information on medical science: . Specifically, it could be considered as advocating a National Health Service, such as was created in Britain four decades later - since a doctor who is employed by the state and gets a fixed salary for treating whoever needs medical attention would not face the dilemma discussed in the foreword. The theme of the play remains current: in any time, there will be treatments that are so scarce or costly that some people can have them while others cannot. Who is to decide, and on which grounds is the decision to be taken? It is sometimes claimed that an unexpected side- effect of the play's success was to greatly increase the popularity of the first name . However, UK government statistics (covering England and Wales) only show the name 'Jennifer' first entering the top 1. As well, the name didn't enter the top 1,0. US girls until 1. Production information. The production received middling reviews. Lewis Broad, Dictionary to the Plays and Novels of Bernard Shaw, A. Black, London, 1. Irish Playography^Tad Mosel.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2017
Categories |