So You Want to be a Doctor?

About the Book

So You Want to Be a Doctor? tells of some of the more humorous, tragic, and poignant cases Dr. Harold Fletcher encountered during his many years as a physician. He tells hopeful medical students, "If you can:

• Give the same medical attention to a woman off the street that you would a Major Hollywood star.
• Extricate Vaseline jar from a drunk lady's vagina.
• Endure the horror of hundreds of bodies and body parts scattered over a field after an air accident or an enormous explosion.
• React professionally even though you are fearful that the small boy, dressed as your young son was when you left for the office that morning, whose bloody head you are holding together, could be your son.
• Have the ability and clear-headedness-without the help of proper equipment-to extricate a jack from the throat of a child who is turning blue, then you may have the nerve and stamina to be a doctor."

About the Author

Dr. Harold Fletcher, for more than 40 years, practiced medicine as an obstetrician-gynecologist in California; he also taught medicine at UCLA. He was on-call for motion picture studios and had numerous well-known movie personalities as patients. Earlier, in the Air Force at Randolph Air Force Base, he served as chief of the OB-GYN department, treating servicewomen and wives of servicemen. In 1947, when the ship Grandcamp exploded in Texas City, he was one of the physicians called on to treat 5,000 wounded and to help families identify what was left of 600 dead.