Inga Roen

AP Lang
11/18/10
Selzer’s The Surgeon as Priest

The Surgeon vs. The Healer

In Richard Selzer’s essay, The Surgeon as Priest, he explores the relationship between religion and
spirituality and the more medical and scientific study of the human body that he knows as a doctor.
Consider a surgeon – most people expect a medical expert to deliver a diagnosis and give treatment
completely objective from their personal religion. The diagnosis received is expected to be completely
correct, and designed to prolong the life and limit the suffering of the patient. But in Selzer's essay, a
“healer” has a different way of looking at the curing. The monk in the text (Yeshi Dhonden) approaches
the patient with a spiritual calm, and analyzes her wellbeing as “winds” coursing throughout her body – a
manner that would surely leave most taken aback. Dhonden had the same goal as Selzer or another
surgeon would have: to heal the patient. Through his use of diction and imagery, Selzer artfully conveys
his feelings on the similarity of the roles of the surgeon and healer. Selzer communicates his position on
the matter that, while the two approaches are different, the lasting similarity is what matters in the end.
Richard Selzer’s use of diction in this piece alternates between the use of heavily scientific or crude
language like “dura mater” and “patty, buzz, suck, cut”, and more scriptural, elevated words when
discussing more traditional spiritual matters - “robe of saffron and maroon”, “O bury my heart there”.
This serves to emphasize the differences between the two at a fundamental level. The use of all of these
words in conjunction, however, gives a sense of sameness throughout the wording that ties the two
varieties (and concepts) together. In adjoining paragraphs, Selzer combines these two types of diction
directly in anecdotes that involve both the spiritual and the medical sides of healing to parallelize the two.
Within Selzer's discussion of brain cancer patient Joe Riker, he quickly alternates from a visualization of
the cancer having “chewed through Joe's scalp, munched his skull” to how it has “given him a grace that a
lifetime of good health had not bestowed”. Later in his relation, he compares the concept of a coincidence
(miraculous healing within medical thought) to that of an actual miracle brought on by Joe's religion, all
the while using this contrasting diction to emphasize his point. Is Joe's brain simply a “one-pound loaf of
sourdough”, has his character been reduced to a “terrible ordinariness” by the coincidental curing of his
cancer? Or was Joe's head truly healed by the “holy water”, and Selzer is simply ornery towards the
concept of the “brush of wings” that lead Joe to his recovery?
Selzer uses imagery in the same respect. He uses descriptors to help the audience visualize both the
more surgical and gruesome aspects of healing, like the story about performing surgery on a brain, and
the more spiritual ones, like the description of the monk working with a patient. He again combines both
in the same piece to formulate a prevailing atmosphere throughout all parts even though the basic subject
matter is (debatably) changing. Selzer again combines both types of imagery within the same narrative to
emphasize the kinship of religion and medicine in the practice of healing. Yeshi Dhonden is a monk who
has “purified himself” for his interaction with the patient, a process involving “bathing, fasting, and
prayer”. While this sets him apart from the surgeons, the processes that he takes to analyze the patient are
methodical – he “pours a small portion of the urine specimen into the bowl, and proceeds to whip the
liquid with the two sticks.” We are given the image of him being careful, precise, one might even say
surgical. This thread helps bind throughout the piece and thus gives a sense of similarity between the
“surgeon” and the “healer”.
Richard Selzer uses both diction and imagery to create a prevailing attitude throughout The Surgeon as
Priest that displays his feelings about how basically similar the two roles are. He articulates the fact that
the surgeon and the priest are intertwined – when describing Yeshi Dhonden, he maintains that he is
“more than doctor. He is priest.” Selzer sees Yeshi as one who applies the nature of the doctor as more, as
having more spirit and fire to his practice than the traditional medical doctor. Throughout his essay,
Selzer discovers for himself that the religious nature of the “healer” is very similar to (and perhaps even
better than) the scientific focus of a surgeon. He uses the same methods to emphasize the general
differences between the more scientific nature and the more spiritual one, his point is made in the end that
they really aren’t all that different - the goal in the long run is just to make people better.