ABSTRACT
Medical school began in September 1969, between the August Woodstock love-in and the violent December Altamont Rolling Stones concert, where a Hell’s Angels “security” guard killed a crazed spectator, while Mick Jagger sang “Sympathy for the Devil.” I watched my world erupt. Hardly a participant, I self-consciously regarded myself a spectator who had been immersed in the Sea of Medicine. For relief I read surveys of Wittgenstein’s thought and then trekked into his Tractatus (1981), only to find myself immediately lost. In part, I recognized that I was too preoccupied, and so I again veered away from philosophy. The tension between the rational and the poetic, between science and myth, lingered for a while and then the conflict subsided below the tide of a life in medicine. No time to synthesize, just excel! Ironically, considering the intimacy of illness and death, I, for the most part, pushed existential questions aside. Once I accepted the assignment of becoming a doctor, the professional course lay clearly before me.
