Medicine And One's Humanity In Contract Tracing By Vincent Lam

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Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures examines the connections between the complications of medicine and one’s humanity. The author Vincent Lam does this by crafting a story that explains the emotional and distancing consequences of practicing medicine. Firstly, he achieves this by employing complex medical terminology that readers are unfamiliar with. This creates a feeling of detachment, which is something doctors themselves experience in their profession. Similarly, Lam employs a creative formatting to further to capture this feeling. In the short story “Contract Tracing,” he delivers the plot through files, transcripts and notes. This paints the conflict, reveals details, and adds a much-needed sense of urgency. In “Contract Tracing” by Vincent …show more content…

In “Contract Tracing,” Lam uses excessive medical terminology and detail to deliver a satisfying but somehow distancing story. In particular, many of the stories are littered with medical terminology and lengthy descriptions of medical procedures. There are sentences that are deliberately written to be difficult for a reader to fully understand. For example, Lam initially uses this technique to introduce the conflict of Fitzgerald suffering from SARS. Lam describes Fitzgerald as having “mild tachypnea” and “fine inspiratory crackles” (273). While the vocabulary immediately brings urgency into the situation, it also makes the severity of Fitzgerald’s illness unclear. Thus, it may influence readers to overlook Fitzgerald’s suffering. Afterwards, Lam also utilizes this same technique when updating Fitzgerald’s condition. Instead of simple explanations, Lam uses convoluted descriptions. As readers comb through the doctor's notes, they discover Fitzgerald’s X-ray shows “patchy densities and air bronchograms suggestive of widespread consolidation” (Lam 273). In this description, the language and tone used are objective and impersonal. Similar to the reader …show more content…

For example, there is a consultation report from Dr. Zenkie that initially seems professional and brief. However, the diction used can give insight into Dr. Zenkie’s personality. For example, his notes impersonally refer to Fitzgerald as a “timely and interesting case” (Lam 274). By using this distancing language, Fitzgerald is treated as if he were a puzzle to solve and not an actual human. Lam has purposely portrayed Dr. Zenkie as someone who has this mindset. However, Dr. Zenkie is not the only person who has this character flaw. Ironically, Fitzgerald himself confesses his own feeling of detachment in his job. He describes his job as “playing Mr. Doctor,” like an actor assuming a role (Lam 291). It is easy to see Fitzgerald is no longer the same person who had a love for medicine. Overall, these subtleties are how Lam shows that doctors are dehumanized because they treat patients as problems, rather than humans they must attach to and emphasize

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