The Doctor’s Bag for the New Millennium

When I was a medical student in Madras, India, in the late 1970s, my uncle, a retired physician, still made occasional house calls. In his early years he delivered babies in dimly lighted huts, often resorting to high forceps on the head — something that is rarely done now. His compounder — the man who would compound his prescription of mistura carminativa and dispense it in corked glass bottles — carried my uncle’s medical bag. It was almost like a trunk — a mobile office. The compounder became so experienced from watching my uncle that he secretly began a practice of his own, delivering babies and even applying forceps.

My uncle’s doctor’s bag from his halcyon days was long gone by the time I was a medical student staying in his house; it had been replaced by a newish model, a small tan suitcase with square corners and latches on the top. When it was opened, two shelves magically unfolded. The medicinal odor that emanated was so powerful it could deliver a buzz.

One shelf held the sterilized syringes, needles, cotton swabs and alcohol that were the bread and butter of a doctor’s trade in India — every patient wanted an injection, and doctors were destined to disappoint if they didn’t oblige. The other shelf held ampules of adrenaline, Coramine, theophylline and other emergency medications as well as rows of bright orange vitamin B12 ampules — a dramatic injectable placebo.

The bottom of the bag was stuffed with bottled medications, a blood pressure cuff and instruments that my uncle rarely used: Foley catheters, hemostats and the like. I had carried that bag for him more than once and been there when he jabbed adrenaline into a desperately wheezing patient and produced immense relief.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/the-doctors-bag-for-the-new-millennium/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121009