It was not so many generations ago that the bedraggled American doctor spent long nights traversing mud-slicked roads, or fending off some new-to-town competitor armed with a week or two of medical education and evangelizing some cockamamie new treatment.
Solidarity under such circumstances did not come easy. In time though, doctors—in part through licensing boards, medical schools and associations, and epochal advances in medical science—successfully organized to greatly improve their collective social and economic status, establishing one of 20th century America’s true secular priesthoods.
Dr. Will Flanary, the ophthalmologist who practices by day at Eye Health Northwest’s Oregon City and Wilsonville
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