Satisfaction

The difference between surgeons and physicians is so much that you can basically put them in two species. Physicians are teased as boring impractical philosophers, while surgeons are primitives who work in reflexes.

I guess this forever-ongoing accusations originate from our different source of satisfaction.

Surgeons are powerful, they diagnose, investigate and CURE. Who would not be amazed after surviving from a Whipple operation? It is simply amazing to every patient who has been bombarded by bad news of cancer, while being treated completely under surgeons' hands. So, surgeons love to see things cured - all at once.

Physicians are different. They think, think, and THINK. The most bit of satisfaction probably come from making the diagnosis itself. This is so true for all those brainy internalists, who can spot a case of rare endocrine disorder based solely on trival derrangement in electrolytes. After the diagnosis, can they offer a cure? Err, quite often - a big no.

But being unable to cure dosent mean we can do nothing. Controlling progression of medical diseases can as well prolong a patient life (hopefully the quality of it), though definitely not as drastic as from curative surgery.

Yea, this debate will go on, as even I myself is so much tilted in personal preference.