Paul Starr continues his detailed analysis of the development of the professional authority that granted physicians their elitist status. This analysis, as it came to unfold, in chapter three has made me realize that the circumstances affecting the interplay of medicine and class/status in modern Egypt is eerily similar to mid-nineteenth century America--except that it is only reversed!
Medicine’s professional authority was well-established in the pre-revolution Egypt. Physicians were regarded as the crème de la crème, and higher education was only reserved to those who could afford it and were sufficiently high-up on the socioeconomical ladder to pass the admission interview, rightfully called by the Egyptians ‘screening for social appropriateness.’
with the 1952 coup d’état, medical schools were free to all, and they also became mandated to accept larger numbers of students (three of four times the numbers they were originally accepting.) The admission interview was canceled by the state’s regulatory authorities, thus granting access to applicants with lower social position. As time went by and the social fabric of physicians became more and more varied, authority weakened and medicine became more of a ‘get rich’ scheme among the lower-class whose children were showing scholastic achievement and merit.
A term was even coined for their opportunistic dreams: “the five eins.” Ein being a letter of the Arabic alphabet with which started the Arabic words denoting the five, most coveted, dreams of the doctors-to-be: a busy clinic, a luxury car , a mansion(!) , a bride (sexism typical of the patriarchal Egyptian medical society) and a tall apartment building. This era in Egypt has signaled a movement away from the prevalence of medical philanthropy which existed in the days of the monarch and towards weary regard of physicians as businessmen trying to make money. The physician went from being an educated ‘pasha’ with inheritance to spare to a ‘nouveau-riche’ who benefits from sickness and medical procedures. This weakened the authority-- and created fierce competition between the new graduates seeking the riches offered by practicing medicine. Interestingly, many of those disillusioned with how much monetary success Egypt has to offer sought to emigrate to the U.S. and practice there--since, rumor has it, and there is more money to be made by physicians in the Unites States than anywhere else.
The “consolidation of authority” for Egyptian medicine came years later, when the phenomenon Starr describes as “the renewal of legitimate complexity” occurred in Egypt. The renewed faith and restored authority was because of ‘westernization’ of physicians and other practitioners. Knowledge and science, clearly, were more advanced in the West--so it followed that doctors trained, even if partially, in the west should be granted special status and authority. A mere “Member of the Royal College of such and such” was almost a sure-fire way to make the society, patients and colleagues alike, listen more closely.
Medicine’s professional authority was well-established in the pre-revolution Egypt. Physicians were regarded as the crème de la crème, and higher education was only reserved to those who could afford it and were sufficiently high-up on the socioeconomical ladder to pass the admission interview, rightfully called by the Egyptians ‘screening for social appropriateness.’
with the 1952 coup d’état, medical schools were free to all, and they also became mandated to accept larger numbers of students (three of four times the numbers they were originally accepting.) The admission interview was canceled by the state’s regulatory authorities, thus granting access to applicants with lower social position. As time went by and the social fabric of physicians became more and more varied, authority weakened and medicine became more of a ‘get rich’ scheme among the lower-class whose children were showing scholastic achievement and merit.
A term was even coined for their opportunistic dreams: “the five eins.” Ein being a letter of the Arabic alphabet with which started the Arabic words denoting the five, most coveted, dreams of the doctors-to-be: a busy clinic, a luxury car , a mansion(!) , a bride (sexism typical of the patriarchal Egyptian medical society) and a tall apartment building. This era in Egypt has signaled a movement away from the prevalence of medical philanthropy which existed in the days of the monarch and towards weary regard of physicians as businessmen trying to make money. The physician went from being an educated ‘pasha’ with inheritance to spare to a ‘nouveau-riche’ who benefits from sickness and medical procedures. This weakened the authority-- and created fierce competition between the new graduates seeking the riches offered by practicing medicine. Interestingly, many of those disillusioned with how much monetary success Egypt has to offer sought to emigrate to the U.S. and practice there--since, rumor has it, and there is more money to be made by physicians in the Unites States than anywhere else.
The “consolidation of authority” for Egyptian medicine came years later, when the phenomenon Starr describes as “the renewal of legitimate complexity” occurred in Egypt. The renewed faith and restored authority was because of ‘westernization’ of physicians and other practitioners. Knowledge and science, clearly, were more advanced in the West--so it followed that doctors trained, even if partially, in the west should be granted special status and authority. A mere “Member of the Royal College of such and such” was almost a sure-fire way to make the society, patients and colleagues alike, listen more closely.
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