Page 9 - NAMAH-Jan-2023

Editorial

The Physician and the Soldier

Both the physician and the soldier have warfare. This necessitated the logical tradition
certain things in common. Both have to face of warrior classes in different denouements
life and death in complex playing fields, both in different cultures.This age-old tradition
have to be spectators of gruesome tragedies was completely overturned during the two
and finally, both have to learn to be detached. world wars when large masses of commoners
But there are important differences. were inducted into the army. If there had
been no such world wars, the majority of
The soldier does not know the person being these commoners would never have opted
killed by him. The soldier has no ethical for being participants in the killing fields. The
concerns in killing. unfortunate result was that the phenomenon
of reversal of ethical codes became the norm.
The soldier is not going to face lawsuits for What was unethical in civilian life became the
killing. The physician on the other hand standard in mass warfare. When the saga of
knows the suffering patient and is liable to the world wars ended, the ethical reversal
face legal action for therapeutic lapses. extended as a norm in public space. Arnold
Toynbee stated:
The predicament of the soldier
“One cause of the recent outbreak of lawless-
It would be interesting to observe the ness in a number of different fields of life is the
ramifications of the physician’s and soldier’s turning of millions of men into soldiers in the
actions. two world wars and in the many local wars
that have also been waged since 1914. War is
a deliberate reversal of the normal inhibition
against taking human life. For a soldier, killing
his fellow human beings is a duty instead of
being the crime that it is if he commits murder
as a civilian. This arbitrary and immoral reversal
of a major ethical rule is bewildering and
demoralising in itself. Moreover, a soldier
on active service is torn out of his customary
social setting and is therefore released from
all his customary social restraints. When he is
The soldier today is a product of a long historical being commanded to kill, it is no wonder that
struggle which saw the institutionalisation of he also ceases to be governed by other normal

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