“When I was in medical school, senior physicians would frequently usher a group of us students into a patient’s room so we might hear them tell the story of their illness. It seemed that the more classic the story was for a particular illness the more intense was their ushering. We would huddle around the patient’s bed all of us transfixed by the doctor interviewing the patient. I remember hanging on the patient’s every last word and, simultaneously, shifting through the textbook data stored in my brain in search of a diagnostic match. When done, the senior doctor would turn around and challenge us to diagnose what ailed the patient and we would respond with a flurry of answers. I still remember the thrill of solving the puzzle, of making a ‘textbook diagnosis’…”
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