Being a good doctor means being incredibly compulsive. It has nothing to do with flights of intuition or brilliant diagnoses or even saving lives. If you think that you�ve been watching too much House.
It is dealing with a lot of people with chronic diseases that you really can't change or improve. You can help patients. You can make a difference in their lives, but this is done mostly by drudgery - day after day paying attention to details, seeing patient after patient and complaint after complaint, and being responsive when you don't feel like being responsive.
To be a doctor, then, means much more than to dispense pills or to patch up or repair torn flesh and shattered minds. To be a doctor is to be an intermediary between life and death, sickness and health, whatever creed, colour or gender. I may thank God for any cure and I may also thank the doctors, would you deny me that relief and right? If they fail to cure me then can I berate God and the doctors? Is that ok with you?
Must we eulogize Apollo and Aesculapius instead?