The Forgotten Worship
Imagine you are the Doctor… and someone comes to see you who is in great pain…. they have a boil… you know that it needs to be drained or they may suffer a worse fate than pain. You know it is exquisitely sensitive and anything you do by way of intervention will hurt worse for the moment, but that as soon as it is drained there will be relief of pain and the healing journey will begin. It will be a painful procedure, time consuming, costly for materials and equipment, will contaminate the room, will smell terrible and will leave a scar. Can’t you just prescribe an antibiotic and walk out? It would be so much simpler and the patient will not blame you for the pain. Whatever scar occurs will not be your fault, since you can’t predict exactly where the boil will burst forth anyway, though you cannot be sure the patient won’t die of sepsis before the boil breaks, and the spread of the infection if in fact it is a bacterial resistance species could result in amputation or worse. What do you do?