“He was one of those fresh Jewish types you want to kill at sight ... she on the other hand looked Italian, a goaty slant to her eyes ... She looked dirty. So did he ... And she smelled, the usual smell of sweat and dirt you find among people who habitually do not wash or bathe ... People like that belong in clinics ... Just dumb oxen. Why the hell do they let them into the country? Half idiots at best.”
Who wrote that? Some hate-mongering pundit on a cable channel? A Twitter troll?
Nope. It was William Carlos Williams, MD, the patron saint of physician-writers.
Dr. Allan M. Block
You’re thinking “No! Not him!” We all read “The Use of Force” and “Red Wheelbarrow” in high school or college. But this blatant anti-Semitism and xenophobia?
The short story is “A Face of Stone” from his collection “The Doctor Stories” (highly recommended). When Williams was asked to remove those parts before publication, he refused because they’re a key part of the story. And I agree with him.
The point, as in so much of life, is the big picture. Despite his vivid disgust, he examines their infant, reassuring the mother that everything is okay, and later helping her with her leg pain and walking difficulties. At the end of the short story he realizes that his impressions were wrong and that people he started out hating are, well, just people who need help. And, as doctors, isn’t helping what we’re here to do?
It’s not just Williams, it’s all of us. First impressions aren’t always correct, but we rely on them — a lot. We’re programmed to. Our ancestors in the caves didn’t have much time to decided friend or foe when they encountered others.
So we initially judge people on their faces, expressions, hair, clothes, religious symbols (if present), jewelry ... The things that are registered by the brain in a split-second before the first words are exchanged.
All of us are constantly “scanning” others we encounter. In the office, store, restaurant, whatever. Usually those impressions are fleeting as we forget that person within a minute or two since we don’t see them again. But as doctors we do get to know them as patients, and so are constantly “updating” our mental files as new information comes in.
As Williams tells the story, he realizes that the “face of stone” isn’t that of the young mother he mentally derided — it’s his own face, turned that way by his first dismissive impression of the family, and then melted as he realizes he was wrong and learns from the experience to be a better doctor.
In vivid terms he reminds us that, although doctors, we are still susceptible to the same foibles, errors, and incorrect snap-judgments that all people are, but what matters is that we can, and have to, overcome them.
As a wall plaque in St. Mary’s General Hospital in Passaic, New Jersey, reminds us: “We walk the wards that Williams walked.”
We all do. Everyday. Everywhere.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.