No. 260 - Lithotomy

Have you ever set a  goal, perhaps even one that you've added to your bucket list, the subject of Post No. 90, and then did everything necessary to accomplish that goal, and then fail to say a simple phrase like "don't cut the back," and have to start all over again?

I've been getting my hair cut by the same guy, mentioned in Post No. 113, for about a dozen years. Up until about a year ago, it was always the same routine. Short hair. Then I decided to grow it longer. Because, why not? So today I go in for a trim, we chat, I like the length, maybe a little off the sides, yada, yada, yada, he finishes and he hands me a mirror, and asks how I like it.

I looked at him and said, "You cut the back." Just like that. Monotone. No inflection. "You cut the back." So now I'm back to where I was six months ago. I guess that's why we have bucket lists, eh?

Anyway he recommended a new book to me. At least I think it's the one he mentioned. I seem to have forgotten because, quite frankly, I can't believe he cut the back. But hey, it's only hair, right?

Anyway, as I recall, it was Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. More than 75% of the 400+ reviews on Amazon give it 5-stars. But this is the same guy who highly recommended The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Post No. 206 will tell you how much I liked that one. And...he cut the back. But serious, I'm over it.

I learned that "cutting for stone" comes from the Hippocratic Oath: "I will not cut for stone, even for the patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art."

I then learned that lithotomy is the surgical removal of a stone - as in kidney stone - from the urinary tract. Lithotomy comes from the Greek words "lithos" meaning stone and "tomos" meaning cut. Therefore, the Hippocratic Oath contained a clear warning for physicians against the "cutting" of patients to remove kidney stones. This was an act that was better left to surgeons, who were distinct from physicians at the time the Oath was written.