May 28, 2025

Health care started out as something simple.

If you were hit with a stick, someone patched you up. If you feel off your horse, someone pulled you out of the mud and set with you until the shaking stopped. In the beginning medicine was all about the visible, arrow in the leg, the broken bone. If you could see it, you could try and fix it.

Then came tools: scalpels, crude anesthetics. We started peeking inside the body, seeing the hidden problems, stitching organs, fighting infections, still very physical but more sophisticated than see it-fix it.

Technologies leaped forward. X-rays, blood tests, MRI’s and the invisible became seen. Scientists became Diagnosticians. And we got really good at it. So good it felt that our language changed. We stopped talking about illness, we started talking about health. We don’t have National Illness Services we have National Health Services because we’re not trying to just fix what’s broken but help people stay healthy, balanced, well.

A new chapter in medicine emerged when we began to really consider things that are not seen on an X-ray. Stress, loneliness, anxiety and depression and the reality that psychologically one could create physical problems.

Wilfred Grenfell crossed frozen bays to bring medicine but what he really brought was something as important: Presence, Compassion, Belief.

Those of my generation are seeking the answer to “anti-ageing”. This is a misnomer in that we are made to age, our body is meant to deteriorate over time, to everything there is a season.

Caring is a human instinct; it is something we all carry with us if we wear a stethoscope around our neck or not.

Although medicine will continue to change let’s hope that the heart behind it won’t.

Thanks for traveling with us.