Story

While we considered what to present in the medical grand round, the inevitable conclusion was to ask one trainee of ours to present the case history, and the other to review the literature.

After the division of labor was fixed, KM reminded me to take a careful look on the slides for the case presentation, which I hastily agreed. Alas, by no means we thought VK - our trainee who was responsible for the first part - was less competent. It was just that we were both convinced it was actually more trying to present a coherent and comprehensive history than to give a (brief) talk on the book knowledge of a certain subject. The latter is simple: you pick a good review article or two, perform certain copy-and-paste function, and the rest is done. In a neuroanatomy sense, it takes the Wernicke's and the Broca's areas and some connection bundles - but you can do away with the rest of your cerebral cortex.

But presenting a case history is different. You've got to give out the information bit by bit while trying to make the next happening a logical sequel of the previous step. If it happens to be a diagnostic problem, important clues would be put in an obvious place with an innocuous manner, so that when the climax comes the answer seems surprising but also inevitable.

Oh, I read too many detective fictions, I know.

But, look, the best narrator of detective story is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - who obviously cultivated his superb skill of telling a story in the medical school.