Medicine, Gabriel García Márquez, and Love in the Time of Cholera

Abstract

The Nobel award-winning author Gabriel García Márquez (born 1927) originally released his book Love in the Time of Cholera in Colombia in 1985. For us physicians and surgeons this book contains lessons about medical humanities and the opportunity to apply them to our profession. Dr. Juvenal Urbino, one of the book's central figures, is a distinguished physician with impeccable training in Paris in the late 1870s to early 1880s. He returned to his native Colombian Caribbean coast to practice medicine and surgery. There his practice set an example for contemporary and future generations of physicians. Urbino was knowledgeable, dedicated, committed, studious, and well-intentioned. He mastered the humanities to the benefit of patients and society alike. He was an outstanding professor at the medical school and a favorite teacher to his attentive students. For all his good virtues, however, he did not serve the poor as much as he should have, possibly as a consequence of his opulent origin in the District of the Viceroys of his natal city. In short, Dr. Urbino brought to the medical profession a bright example of responsibility, professionalism, and integrity. Thus, he should be remembered as a physician and professor worthy of imitating in today's practice of medicine.