ABSTRACT
The typical fictional doctor is not a happily married man who enjoys helping his children with their homework or taking the family on camping vacations. Even during the nineteenth century, and long before the current epidemic of marital failures, physicians were widely portrayed as single, widowed, unhappily married or divorced. In accordance with their priestly tradition, a great many physicians from a range of cultural backgrounds have never been married. In the contemporary real world, medical divorces, mostly stages on the road to remarriage, are common although, with the exception of those involving psychiatrists, no more so than in the general. Dysfunctional marriages are not restricted to the medical profession. Several medical stories use the biblical theme of a pair of eligible sisters, one of whom is enchanting and the other hard-working. The demands of the profession inevitably turn physicians into one-sided individuals.
