“The body listens carefully to the stories the mind keeps repeating.”
Doctor, I Don’t Trust You
There is perhaps no relationship in modern India more paradoxical than the one between patients and doctors.
People enter hospitals with folded hands and simmering suspicions. They distrust the doctor, distrust the hospital, distrust the pharmaceutical industry, distrust “modern medicine,” distrust antibiotics, distrust stents, distrust vaccines, distrust billing systems—and then proceed to ask, often urgently, “Doctor saab, what should we do now?”
Medicine has always depended partly on chemistry and partly on faith. Penicillin kills bacteria, but reassurance lowers cortisol. A surgeon repairs anatomy, but trust calms physiology. The body, unfortunately for sceptics, listens more to patient’s fears than to external chemical molecules. Today, the trust has become so endangered that some patients suspect even reassurance. “Don’t worry” is interpreted as evidence that worrying is urgently require
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