by Anwar A. Khan
At the outset, I wish to quote from the book of “Rise Up and Salute the Sun” written by famed Egyptian-American author Suzy Kassem, “Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies, and a Doctor for Healing of Patients, not killing of them.” As a matter of fact, Dr. Bernard B. Nath who loved to give or bring back a patient’s life passed away from this mundane world on 16 January, 2019. He was a tested and trusted physician, and the patients drank his remedy for more than four decades in silence and tranquility and got relief.
Dr. Bernard B. Nath is an allopathic physician of medicine by profession. He did his Doctor of Medicine from Italy. Being a very kind-hearted Doctor of medicine, he had been treating his patients with strong dedication, medical skills and kindness; and he always remained concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through his excellent treatment. He used to take a very insignificant fee per medical consultation. Every patient is a true votary of him because of his kindness and his very high quality of treatment. I know him since 1983. He is a perfect Doctor, perfect in all respects and a perfect human-being. Innumerable patients took his quality treatment with great satisfaction. Everyone respected him highly from the bottom of their hearts because of his excellent treatment to his patients. But he always kept a very low profile. He died at the age of only 68, but he should have lived for so many years more to serve his patients.
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| Bernard B. Nath |
He is rare species of Doctor and one will not be able to find another physician to his level of quality in the present time in Bangladesh. Dr. Bernard is an excellent medicinal physician and professional and every sense of the word. He is truly the finest and most gifted medicine specialist in Bangladesh. He was a true asset to the country. His talent and expertise are superb! What a fabulous field of medicine; watching the transformation and joy of patients. One had to be filled with gratitude for his dedication to his field of activities and tender care of his patients.
I am grateful to know what a special person he has been since 1983. He enriched the lives of so many people. I hope all of his patients have the same respect and admiration for him that I do. He is truly a master in his field and has changed many lives. Many patients are now healthier, happier, and more confident and are committed to getting in good shape and health. Dhaka is blessed to had such a kind-hearted physician who cared about his patients and he was a consummate professional. He was an incredible doctor and I imagine he did wonderful things for his patients every day. Patients are also grateful for his tranquil reassurance that is always calm but always beneficial.
He was truly the “best of the best” in the field of medical treatment in our country! His professionalism, kindness and expertise are highly praiseworthy. He knew how happy he was making his patients every day but as I said earlier, he always kept a very low profile. He is a gifted general physician in the discipline of medicine. He was so very special to every patient. “When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace” and I think Dr. Bernard strongly believed and have truly internalised these words of Dalai Lama in his inward soul to render his services to the patients.
Simply put, a great doctor is a great human being, who happens to have the capacity to restore health. The greatest doctors are those who know when to stop and pull out. A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor, a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have and he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire for their good before his own.
An enlightened Master Jaggi Vasudev has said, “In terms of the real quality of a human being, only when suffering comes, when pain comes, does a man stand up as a human being.” Similarly, until and unless, we fall in sick, we can’t fathom the sufferings of illness. I am sexagenarian; so I frequently encounter physical sickness and try to get some relief for which I used go to consult with a noble physician like Dr. Bernard B. Nath. He always treated me as his own man and as his own friend. I feel proud of him and shall do so unto my death.
I am deeply saddened to have heard of his sudden death and when I was writing this piece, my eyes were welling up every moment in remembrance of this pure gentleman physician that Bangladesh has ever produced. Bangladesh does have serious dearth of good doctors in the related field of illness. And we shall feel more so in absence of a great physician like Dr. Bernard B. Nath.
“The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them” has been aptly said by Dr. Bernard M. Baruch and any sort of illness or disease is nothing but a trouble and we should not carry on with it. Seeking a doctor’s advise for remedy is the right thing to do. Whenever I fell into sickness, I prefered to consult with humanist physicians like Dr. Bernard B. Nath, MD (Medicine), Italy and maybe, because we also are in the same age group. There is, within physicians, special breeds who have honed the uncanny ability to simply feel what is wrong with a patient, and pursue this observation appropriately. This is the breed of Dr. Bernard, a man perhaps most famously known for being the real-life inspiration behind all patients. He asserts in the tone of Dr. Abraham Verghese, “I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician. My intent isn't to save the world as much as to heal myself. But in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness.”
Before you examine the body of a patient, be patient to learn his story. For once you learn his story; you will also come to know his body. Observation, reason, human understanding, courage; these make the physician. To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine. The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command. The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him. It is the duty of a doctor to prolong life and it is not his duty to prolong the act of dying. Dr. Bernard B. Nath always tried his best to prolong a patient’s life with his kindness.
Men, who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create. Ernest Hemingway said, “Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer.” In nothing do men more nearly approach God, than in giving health to men. The doctor is the servant, not master for teaching Nature. Dr. Bernard B. Nath was simply like a servant to his patients.
A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more than even the whole man—he must view the man in his world. Carl Wilhelm Hermann Nothnagel said, “All knowledge attains its ethical value and its human significance only by the human sense with which it is employed. Only a good man can be a great physician.” In fact, Dr. Bernard is a human being of morally admirable and as such, he is a physician of uppercase and major significance or importance. But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor. He was a great friend to the poor patients and sometimes, he treats his patients without any fees or with a very nominal fee.
Let the physician take care to regulate the whole regimen of the patient's life for joy and happiness by promising that he will soon be well, by allowing his relatives and special friends to cheer him and by having someone tell him jokes, and let him be solaced also by music on the viol or psaltery. The physician must forbid anger, hatred, and sadness in the patient, and remind him that the body grows fat from joy and thin from sadness.
“Medicine rests upon four pillars—philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics. The first pillar is the philosophical knowledge of earth and water; the second, astronomy, supplies its full understanding of that which is of fiery and airy nature; the third is an adequate explanation of the properties of all the four elements—that is to say, of the whole cosmos—and an introduction into the art of their transformations; and finally, the fourth shows the physician those virtues which must stay with him up until his death, and it should support and complete the three other pillars” has correctly been spelt out by Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus. And Dr. Bernard B. Nath was the physician who possessed all those qualities.
Only the healing art enables one to make a name for him and at the same time give benefit to others. Only those who regard healing as the ultimate goal of their efforts can, therefore, be designated as physicians. Physicians are many in title but very little in reality. Dr. Bernard comes under the purview of that very few little in reality. Physicians still retain something of their priestly origin. The best physician is also a philosopher and he is like a philosopher.
There are some arts which to those that possess them are painful, but to those that use them are helpful, a common good to laymen, but to those that practise them grievous. Of such arts there is one which the Greeks call medicine. For the medical man sees terrible sights, touches unpleasant things, and the misfortunes of others bring a harvest of sorrows that are peculiarly his; but the sick by means of the art rid themselves of the worst of evils, disease, suffering, pain and death. “The ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence” as spelt out by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, has been interanlised in the heart and soul of Dr. Bernard B. Nath.
To end up, we wish to say Allah and the Doctor we alike adore. Dr. Bernard’s achievement of his happiness is the only moral purpose of his life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of his moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of his loyalty to the achievement of his values. Without continual growth and progress, such words as, improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. Restore a man to his health; his purse lies open to thee. To us, the ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence. Each patient ought to feel somewhat the better after the physician's visit, irrespective of the nature of the illness. "In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity. We must go through the storm to appreciate the sunshine!” as defined aright by Albert Einstein and Dr. Bernard is the sunshine; he is one of few finest gentlemen physicians of the country. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all directions. Goodness is about character - integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people. And Dr. Bernard treats patients in an exceptionally different way to heal them. He is now more with us. We are weeping. His hundreds of thousands of patients are sobbing for his death. We shall miss him so dearly. We pray for and shall pray for him. May his soul rests in peace in Heaven. Dear Dr. Bernard B. Nath, we are remembering you with tearful eyes; and you will always remain in our thoughts and prayers.
-The End –
The writer is a senior citizen of Bangladesh, writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.
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