A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, May 7, 2018
Bangladesh: Dr. Bernard B. Nath, a shining five-star physician
I am grateful to know what a special person he has been since 1983. He enriches the lives of so many people. I hope all of his patients have the same respect and admiration for him that I do. He is truly a master in his field and has changed many lives.
( May 6, 2018, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) At
the outset, I wish to quote from the book of “Rise Up and Salute the
Sun” written by Egyptian-American author Suzy Kassem, “Choose a leader
who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons.
Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance.
Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate.
Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness,
not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity.
Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental
improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies, and a
Doctor for Healing of Patients, not killing of them.” As a matter of
fact, Dr. Bernard B. Nath loves to give or bring back a patient’s life.
Therefore, trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and
tranquility.
Dr Bernard B. Nath is an allopathic physician of medicine by profession.
He did his Doctor of Medicine from Italy. Being a very kind-hearted
Doctor of medicine, he has been treating his patients for about four
decades, with strong dedication, medical skills and kindness; and he
always remain concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human
health through his excellent treatment. He takes a very insignificant
fee per medical consultation. Every patient is a true votary of him
because of his kindness and his very high quality of treatment. I know
him since 1983. He is a perfect Doctor, perfect in all respects and a
perfect human-being. Innumerable patients have been taking his quality
treatment with great satisfaction. Everyone respects him highly from the
bottom of their hearts because of his excellent treatment to his
patients. But he always keeps a very low profile. He is above 65 years
old. To verify the veracity of my statement about him, anyone may kindly
visit his chamber to receive his quality treatment at Indira Road,
Dhaka and can interact with the patients waiting there for his medical
consultation.
He is rare species of Doctor and one will not be able to find another
physician to his level of quality in the present time. Dr. Bernard is an
excellent medicinal physician and professional and every sense of the
word. He is truly the finest and most gifted medicine specialist in
Bangladesh. He is a true asset to the country. His talent and expertise
are superb! What a fabulous field of medicine; watching the
transformation and joy of patients. One has to be filled with gratitude
for his dedication to his field of activities and tender care of his
patients.
I am grateful to know what a special person he has been since 1983. He
enriches the lives of so many people. I hope all of his patients have
the same respect and admiration for him that I do. He is truly a master
in his field and has changed many lives. Many patients are now
healthier, happier, and more confident and are committed to getting in
good shape and health. Dhaka is blessed to have such a kind-hearted
physician who cares about his patients and is a consummate professional.
He is an incredible doctor and I imagine he does wonderful things for
his patients every day. Patients are also grateful for his tranquil
reassurance that is always calm but always beneficial.
He is truly the “best of the best” in the field of medical treatment in
our country! His professionalism, kindness and expertise are highly
praiseworthy. He knows how happy he is making his patients every day but
as I said earlier, he always keeps a very low profile. He is a gifted
general physician in the discipline of medicine. He is so very special
to every patient. “When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not
only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to
develop inner happiness and peace” and I think Dr. Bernard strongly
believes and have truly internalised these words of Dalai Lama in his
inward soul to renders his services to his patients.
Simply put, a great doctor is a great human being, who happens to have
the capacity to restore health. The greatest doctors are those who know
when to stop and pull out. A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal
with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is
either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the
psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor, a
man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever
weaknesses and foibles he may have and he must love his fellow human
beings in the concrete and desire for their good before his own.
An enlightened Master Jaggi Vasudev has said, “In terms of the real
quality of a human being, only when suffering comes, when pain comes,
does a man stand up as a human being.” Similarly, until and unless, we
fall in sick, we can’t fathom the sufferings of illness. I am
sexagenarian; so I frequently encounter physical sickness and try to get
some relief for which I used go to consult with physicians and hence, I
have developed some good intimacies with a few best doctors of the
country though the country does have serious dearth of good doctors in
the related field of illness.
“The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing
with them” has been aptly said by Dr. Bernard M. Baruch and any sort of
illness or disease is nothing but a trouble and we should not carry on
with it. Seeking a doctor’s advise for remedy is the right thing to do.
Whenever I fall into sickness, I prefer to consult with humanist
physicians like Dr. Bernard B. Nath, MD (Medicine), Italy and maybe,
because we also are in the same age group. There is, within physicians,
special breeds who have honed the uncanny ability to simply feel what is
wrong with a patient, and pursue this observation appropriately. This
is the breed of Dr Bernard, a man perhaps most famously known for being
the real-life inspiration behind all patients. He asserts in the tone of
Dr. Abraham Verghese, “I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to
become a physician. My intent isn’t to save the world as much as to heal
myself. But in entering the profession, we must believe that
ministering to others will heal our woundedness.”
Before you examine the body of a patient, be patient to learn his story.
For once you learn his story; you will also come to know his body.
Observation, reason, human understanding, courage; these make the
physician. To array a man’s will against his sickness is the supreme art
of medicine. The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged
city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place
at his command. The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a
mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him. It is the
duty of a doctor to prolong life and it is not his duty to prolong the
act of dying.
Men, who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the
joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the
earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is
almost as noble as to create. Ernest Hemingway said, “Deceive not thy
physician, confessor, nor lawyer.” In nothing do men more nearly
approach God, than in giving health to men. The doctor is the servant,
not master for teaching Nature. Dr Bernard B. Nath is simply like a
servant to his patients.
A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more
than even the whole man—he must view the man in his world. Carl Wilhelm
Hermann Nothnagel said, “All knowledge attains its ethical value and its
human significance only by the human sense with which it is employed.
Only a good man can be a great physician.” In fact, Dr Bernard is a
human being of morally admirable and as such, he is a physician of
uppercase and major significance or importance. But nothing is more
estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth,
knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it,
the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and
pays equal attention to the rich and the poor. He is a great friend to
the poor patients and sometimes, he treats his patients without any fees
or with a very nominal fee.
Let the physician take care to regulate the whole regimen of the
patient’s life for joy and happiness by promising that he will soon be
well, by allowing his relatives and special friends to cheer him and by
having someone tell him jokes, and let him be solaced also by music on
the viol or psaltery. The physician must forbid anger, hatred, and
sadness in the patient, and remind him that the body grows fat from joy
and thin from sadness.
“Medicine rests upon four pillars—philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and
ethics. The first pillar is the philosophical knowledge of earth and
water; the second, astronomy, supplies its full understanding of that
which is of fiery and airy nature; the third is an adequate explanation
of the properties of all the four elements—that is to say, of the whole
cosmos—and an introduction into the art of their transformations; and
finally, the fourth shows the physician those virtues which must stay
with him up until his death, and it should support and complete the
three other pillars” has correctly been spelt out by Philippus Aureolus
Paracelsus. And he is the physician who possesses all those qualities.
Only the healing art enables one to make a name for him and at the same
time give benefit to others. Only those who regard healing as the
ultimate goal of their efforts can, therefore, be designated as
physicians. Physicians are many in title but very little in reality. Dr
Bernard comes under the purview of that very few little in reality.
Physicians still retain something of their priestly origin. The best
physician is also a philosopher and he is like a philosopher.
There are some arts which to those that possess them are painful, but to
those that use them are helpful, a common good to laymen, but to those
that practise them grievous. Of such arts there is one which the Greeks
call medicine. For the medical man sees terrible sights, touches
unpleasant things, and the misfortunes of others bring a harvest of
sorrows that are peculiarly his; but the sick by means of the art rid
themselves of the worst of evils, disease, suffering, pain and death.
“The ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of life
and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of
whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence” as spelt out by
Henri-Frédéric Amiel, has been interanlised in the heart and soul of Dr
Bernard B. Nath.
To end up, we wish to say Allah and the Doctor we alike adore. Dr.
Bernard’s achievement of his happiness is the only moral purpose of his
life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the
proof of his moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of
his loyalty to the achievement of his values. Without continual growth
and progress, such words as, improvement, achievement, and success have
no meaning. Restore a man to his health; his purse lies open to thee. To
us, the ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of
life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of
whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence. Each patient
ought to feel somewhat the better after the physician’s visit,
irrespective of the nature of the illness. “In the middle of difficulty,
lies opportunity. We must go through the storm to appreciate the
sunshine!” as defined aright by Albert Einstein and Dr Bernard is the
sunshine; he is one of few finest gentlemen physicians of the country.
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest
appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. The fragrance
of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness
of a person spreads in all directions. Goodness is about character –
integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like.
More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people. And Dr
Bernard treats patients in an exceptionally different way to heal them.
-The End-