Thread by @sohinichat

A thread about doctors based on my observations: #Delhi docs, esp. younger ones, do not touch patients. No clinical exam as is common in #Calcutta No open your mouth wide, turn your eyes to the light, examining your abdomen, listening to your breathing. They prefer test reports>

I have observed this over the past several months as my father has stayed in and out of hospitals, mostly in. Only the older doctors in the hospital, by that I mean those near 60, carry stethoscopes. Is it an outraged #Caclutta habit to examine patients clinically? >

Are doctors reluctant to touch patients now? Is medicine now pathlogy lab based? All machine readings, no human skill?
Yet, I notice all lab reports mention that the results must be clinically co-related. >

In my reporting, I have heard Santhals in Bengal complain that docs in govt hospitals do not like to touch them. I have seen a govt hospital in #Kolkata where poor, mostly Muslim women, were touched with what seemed to me to be disgust by docs. Now I see doctors with my father >

So, this not touching of patients is becoming more common, more egalitarian now. That is good.
It's not thr Santhal and the poor Muslim, but also the upper middle class Brahmin who is not touched. Genuinely, this is equality. >

Yet, one of the promises of modern science (modern medicine) in a hierarchical society like ours was that it would do away with some of the nasty old practices like untouchability. Because if the good doctor can examine the untouchable, then perhaps she/he seems more touchable? >

But now we are all untouchable, it seems. Or our healthcare system is moving towards that.
All diseased bodies are untouchable. Just rely on machine and diagnostic readings.
Perhaps, we won't even need doctors in the future? Only technicians to read the machines.

*outdated Calcutta habit*