A Diffident Doctor

by Hugh L. Moffet M.D.

Overview

A Diffident Doctor tells one doctor's personal story, with all its ups and downs, from childhood to retirement.  Beginning in a small Illinois town, to a Harvard College scholarship, to medical school at Yale, it describes his research in virology and the teaching and consulting in pediatric infectious diseases in Wisconsin.  It is a stark, but unbiased perspective on the medical practices of the times, up through the present. It may be of interest to medical and other health care professionals, as well as to students and the general public.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014374064
Publisher:	Two Harbors Press
Publication date:	04/12/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	250
File size:	285 KB

About the Author

This book tells a doctor's life story, beginning with his childhood in a small Illinois town in the 1930s, then winning a Harvard College scholarship, then choosing Yale over Harvard Medical School. After a pediatric residency at the University of Iowa, he receives an NIH Followship to learn virology research in North Carolina. We read of his family life with his wife and three children in Evanston while he did teaching, research, and patient care at Northwestern and Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and for three decades at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. We learn about the education of a physician in a specialty after medical school and the role of a specialist in teaching medical students and physicians. He describes and explains many uncommon children's diseases he encounters, along with his own illnesses. He tells about the social and political influences on the medical practices of the times. We follow the illnesses and death of his parents and two brothers. He describes summer vacation travels with his wife to Africa, Easter Island and Borneo. In retirement, as he observes children at play, he meditates on the differences in behavior between boys and girls, which many observers have noted throughout the growth of children.