A Not So Brave New World--Part VII

In the wilds of Montana and the mountainous areas of Nevada and the Dakotas, and in the desolate areas of the great plains there existed doctors who practiced far from the hallowed hospitals of the the great New York center. Some of these doctors had trained in the great medical schools and hospitals of New York but had left, some niggling discontent driving them westward. Others had trained at schools and hospitals in the hinterland and were deemed unworthy to practice in the New York hospitals.

And in these areas there came to be communities, small in number, whose practices moved further and further from the practices in the great New York Center. For in these communities doctors and hospitals did not dominate but were rather two integral parts of the communities, not the only focus. In these communities there was no hierarchy that placed Medical School Deans and Hospital Directors far above other people. In these communities Deans and Directors were not infallible, not members of a super species related to mankind only by their physical forms. In these communities there existed harmony as all members of the community were valued for what they contributed. In these communities doctors remembered the ancient saying of "First, do no harm."

In these communities the women medical school graduates who had been written off in the great New York center found partners. And they shed their bitterness at being banished to the outer fringes as they discovered a heretofore new freedom to grow and develop. And they vowed that what had happened to them would not happen to their children. And these women formed lasting partnerships based on shared values and mutual esteem, and discovered that what Medical School they had attended had very little to do with how well they would be regarded as women, as wives and mothers and accountants and lawyers and teachers and engineers and every other field that was now open to them.

And these communities, knowing they were small, banished most envy and greed and acquisitiveness from their midst, knowing them to be destructive. And the members lived in communal harmony, even while developing close friendships with only a few in their group. And these communities welcomed the stranger into their midst, seeing no threat but only the possibility of enrichment to the community.

And where once the members of these communities had once considered themselves as connected by kinship to the communities in the great New York center, they came to see that the kinship was felt only on their part and did not flow both ways. And they shrugged their collective shoulders and went on with the business of living as they remembered that life was once lived, and that they believed should be how life should be lived. In these communities they lived by the Hippocratic Oath, not the Hypocritic Oath.

And there was no want in these communities. Family life prospered as fathers and mothers both were responsible for the well being of children, of other family members. Married life flourished. Creative thinking solved problems before they became ingrained. Vital services were provided as people worked in jobs that offered fulfillment and livelihood. And they did not forget the value of knowing about medicine, and came in the evenings and on weekends to keep their knowledge current, for medicine was the underpinning to all their activities.

And there was more than a little fear in these communities as they heard the whispers of what had become of the great New York center. And here and there in New York were a few individuals who lived on the fringes and who had gone underground and sent out on the forbidden Internet, that still functioned despite government's and Dean's and Director's desires to ban it, messages that told the great tale of woe. And there was fear that what had happened in the great New York center might spread wider, and these communities circled their wagons to protect themselves.

And more and more the great New York center was viewed as foreign.