Memoirs Of A Medicine Man

About the Book

The practice of medicine or surgery is not just sore throats, colds and the flu, removing gall bladders, or back aches and belly aches. It is, however, a roller-coaster cornucopia of people and events where drama, comedy, the heights of joy and the depths of sadness are only moments away, as if a revolving door is constantly ejecting the next encounter - a child with appendicitis, a broken arm, the Ku Klux Klan with death threats, gunshot wounds, snake handlers, con artists, sex, racism, rape, a sweet old lady with arthritis, or some addict - a never-ending myriad.

Thankfully, most of my patients and I grew old together in an air of love and mutual respect, in an era of closeness between patients and doctors, when doctors really cared — not only about the patient''s health, but also about the patients themselves.

Medical school forgot to mention ethics, or talk about humanistic qualities, abstract values outside the world of science. The patient is not just a patient case, (that "gallbladder" in room 911), or a number, but is a unique human being, with emotions, feelings, worthiness, fears, hopes and worries, as well as the capabilities of understanding and courage in the face of disaster. He or she deserves full respect.

"Ten Years of Rape," "Green Door of Racism," "Save A Sexist and Lose A Patient," and "The Comedy Corner" are true stories about the people who traverse these pages, a few of the curious encounters in my forty-year love affair with helping people - sometimes called the practice of medicine.

About the Author

To become a doctor, Ernest Abernathy worked a myriad of blue-collar jobs such as ditch-digger, common laborer, lumberjack, circus worker, milkman, typist, trucker, postman, landscaper, security guard, dock loader, soldier as an enlisted man, later as an officer - perfect preparations for a man planning to spend his life as a physician and surgeon, serving all kinds of people.  

Kentucky Wesleyan College Pre-Med, Emory University Medical School, graduate work at Johns Hopkins, L.S.U. and an affiliate of the University of California in San Francisco made him into a Board-Qualified General Surgeon.  Cancer research on the Maruyama vaccine was with Professor Maruyama of the University of Tokyo, and clinical research with the CDC in Atlanta on chronic fatigue syndrome and the Epstein-Barr virus.  As a combat surgeon, he was awarded the Army’s Bronze Star.  More than 7,000 hospital surgeries and 688,000 office visits attest to his dedication to his fellow man.   The gamut of human emotions was encountered in their stories.. 

His travels included thirty-four countries, four oceans, deserts, swamps and the arctic.  His paintings are held by private collections in twelve states and nine countries.  Ernest and Mary were married in Gibraltar, and now reside in St. Petersburg and Atlanta.