The story of Prometheus

        Prometheus was a hero in the greek mythology, who got punished for helping humans. Zeus chained him to a rock where he was daily tormented by an eagle. Later Hercules rescues him.

It just stroke me how I met Prometheus in my books at two different times in two different ways. It gave me an insight how one can interpret the same thing in two different ways.

         It was the seventh or eighth grade language textbook where I met Prometheus for the first time. It was an emotional description of the human nature of Prometheus and how much he loved humanity. It was a poetic description of his kindness, goodness and his sufferings and sacrifice for the humanity. It detailed the pain he was imposed upon by the eagle and how his immortality became a curse for him. His virtue of immortality prevented him from dying and he had no way but to endure the never-ending torture by Zeus. For a short time I was also touched by his story.

           

         Recently I met him for the second time in the opening pages of Blumgarts’ textbook of Hepatobiliary surgery. This time his picture was depicted as an example of the regenerative capacity of liver. The surgeon, who works on logical explanation and scientific methods, found that the regenerative capacity (may be a little more than natural human being in this case) of the liver was what prevented Prometheus from dying. I don’t know whether the eagle did it on purpose or chose to devour on liver just because it was tasty!

         

        This is how one can see the same thing from different views. The people who tried to think and acquire knowledge from the sufferings and diseases, which crippled other people, are the ones who have contributed to basis of medicine. Most of the scientific persons described in the textbooks are people who had empathy for the patient while there were also other people in the dark pages of history who studied people without any empathy. Like, Joseph Mengel, the notorious Nazi doctor and the Japanese doctors of WW II who run similar concentration camps in the East. A surgeon has to have the heart of a soldier, he should be ready to think and act logically and swiftly in situations, which normal persons usually try to avoid.