The Physician is dead. Long live the Physician.

In recent decades, almost fifty years on, the clinical and research roles of the Physician (Internist-General Medicine) have progressively died down. Is there a price that will ultimately be paid -- or is being paid -- by the discipline and by society at large? Will the future of medical research and practice be further impacted?

Pleading (unsuccessfully) my case for a Hospital Attachment in several large Hospitals in Delhi and in Bangalore, India, for 3 decades, I found myself being ignored to the point of ridicule. No panel was willing to review my c.v.; indeed, my c.v. got supposedly lost between the powers-that-be.

You do research in migraine? Amazing!!! What is there to do research in migraine?? It is simply a headache??!! We know all there is to know about it...The term 'migraine' blocked-out or blotted-out all my contributions to Science? Open-mouthed, and dazed, I accepted my destiny in the hurly-burly of the business of Medicine, and slunk out, tail-between-legs...

The Physician is the cement in-between all other medical specialties, pre-surgery and post-surgery.

With no cement, or cement-by-substitution or quasi-cement, where is the edifice of Medicine -- theory and therapy -- going?

Have we -- Physicians -- contributed to our own demise or have the winds of change between breadth and depth overtaken and submerged us into nothingness?

How many of us will find refuge as a Concierge Doctor?

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6770-5916

03-OCT-2023