So, I finished my surgery rotation last week, and now I am on to pediatrics. It is a world of difference as far as workload and interactions go. In surgery, things are always on the go, but pediatrics is a lot more laid back. We get in around 8 (where we had to be in by 4-4:30 on surgery), and we get out around noon or two (vs. 6-8 on surgery), and best of all, there is no overnight call. I can totally see why people would want to do pediatrics... you get to have a life. At any rate, I can sum it all up with the word "happy." As far as the patient go, I really prefer kids to adults because the things that happen to them are for the most part not their fault. They didn't smoke or drink for 30 years, they didn't get behind the wheel drunk, they didn't do any of the infinite stupid things that adults do to themselves to end up in the Hospital.
On a different note, I was thinking about how the acquisition of technology has affected humans in general. I have long held the view that technology is something that should come in small measured doses. The rapid accumulation of scientific understanding coupled with rapidly advancing technical abilities showed itself to be a particularly bad combination at the beginning of the last century. Once you have made an atomic bomb, that is a kind of threshold that you can't go back to. It is not a value judgment on the US, or Russia since the US did it (you are about to see my optimistic nature) to counter the threat from Japan and Germany. Russia did it to maintain the balance of power with America. The question isn't whether or not it should have been done, the question is how did it come to the point where such a thing was possible. There have been leaders for centuries who have conquered Eurasia and Africa... what makes this so different. The problem was that the second world war had the very unfortunate temporal correlation with the development of quantum theory (not nuclear theory mind you... just quantum theory). In fact, there was almost no understanding of nuclear phenomena at the time, aside from its existence. The majority of the work involved basic thermodynamics. Once the structure of the atom was out of the bag, it was really only a matter of money (plus the observation of uranium decay) before someone made a bomb. Well, I got a little side tracked on this one, so I shall finish it next time.