Compiled by London swaminathan

Post No.2226

Date: 8  October 2015

Time uploaded in London: 19-58

Thanks for the pictures.

Don’t use pictures. Don’t reblog for at least a week.

Yama is the God of Death in the Hindu mythology. There is a funny couplet in the collection of Sanskrit couplets dealing with different subjects, known as Subhasita Ratna Bhandagaram.

Vaidhyaraaja!Namastubhyam Yamaraaja Sahodara!

Yamastu harate praanaan, Vaidhyah Praanaan  dhanaani cha!

Meaning

Hello Doctor! Brother of God of Death (Yamaraja)! I salute You!

God of death takes away our lives! Doctors take away our lives and our money too!

There is another saying in Sanskrit

Hatvaa nrnaam sahasram paschaat  vaidhyo bhavet siddhah

Meaning

It is only after finishing off a thousand (patients)  that a doctor becomes proficient.

Doctors are the butt of many jokes around the world conveying the same feeling. I have already given the following  anecdotes elsewhere:

xxx

A lawyer and a doctor having a dispute about precedence, referred it to Diogenes, who gave it in favour of the lawyer in these terms:

“Let the thief go before and the executioner follow.”

Diogenes: Greek Philosopher 412 BCE to 323 BCE

Xxx

Alexander Dumas, the French novelist, being the guest one day of Dr Gistal, an eminent doctor of Marseilles, was asked by his host after dinner to enrich his album with one of his witty improvisations.

“Certainly,” replied Dumas with a smile, and drawing out his pencil he wrote under the eyes of the doctor, the following lines:

“Since Dr.Gistal came to our town,

To cure diseases casual and hereditary,

The hospital has been pulled down” –

“You flatterer!”, exclaimed the doctor, mightily pleased.

But the poet went on —

“And we have made a larger cemetery.”

Xxx

The patient was lying on the stretcher waiting to be pushed into the operating room. “I am so nervous,” he remarked to a sympathetic young woman standing by.

“This is my first operation.”

“So am I,” said the young lady, “my husband is the doctor and it is first too.”

–Subham–