Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.

A beautiful literary collection that tells of today's country doctor, somewhat removed from our romantic black-bag image of days gone by, but still fulfilling an essential need in caring for spread-out populations. At times, with today's advances in technology, medicine in rural America looks very like it does in America's cities, but the variety of practices is enormous. The Country Doctor Revisited captures the trials and tribulations of medicine, but also the satisfaction and the extraordinary rewards that come to those who embrace such a practice.

We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.

In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.

Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted

When you win, you often lose, that's just a fact. There's no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart.

She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.