Have you heard of Painless Parker? A flamboyant dentist from a century ago, Parker flouted professional propriety. He wore a top hat and performed what he claimed were painless extractions on street corners, advised by a marketer who once worked for P.T. Barnum. When his dental society objected to Parker’s claims, he legally changed his first name to “Painless.”
I thought of him this week, when a southwestern colleague sent me a glossy ad from a local magazine touting a new Dermatology Cosmetic and Laser Center. It featured “a luxury men’s lounge (Man-Cave), complete with whiskey bar.”
What, asked my correspondent, is our world coming to?
Whatever that is has been coming for some time. In Parker’s day, all professional advertising was frowned upon as unseemly. That injunction seems quaint now, when drug and hospital ads flood our TV screens and pop up on every website we visit.
Medical institutions of great prestige tell the world how the techniques they employ or pioneer lead to unsurpassed outcomes, how their patient-centered focus offers compassion second to none. They post YouTube videos in which academics highlight their expertise and their team’s empathy.
I am old enough to remember when such self-promotion was thought impolite and tasteless. I am also old enough to recall when telling the universe where you’ve been and showing pictures of what you’ve been up to was considered uncouth. Few of today’s young people, hooked on Facebook and Instagram, would have any idea why on earth anybody would think such things.
Aside from the presence or prospect of physical infirmity, growing old means being baffled by new attitudes and ways of doing things that younger folks understand implicitly.
In other words, getting old means accepting that you’re out of it.
This realization suggests to me an update of the Denver Developmental Screening Test of my pediatric youth. 3 months: roll over; 6 months: sit up; 12 months: walk; 50 years: join AARP; 70 years: decry the younger generation. (“Those millennials don’t want to work hard the way we did!”)
Some of us are entering the Golden Years of The-World-is-Going-to-Hell-in-a-Handbasket.
I accept that I will not understand or appreciate social media. Younger folk don’t really care what I think about that, or anything else. Even I don’t care what I think.
Fifteen years ago, I sat late one evening in the elegant, high-ceilinged lobby of a major area medical center. A close friend was dying upstairs after a failed second liver transplant for biliary cirrhosis, the first of which had given her 10 good years.
Absorbed in thought, I leaned back and looked up. Hanging from the ceiling was a banner: “Rated Number 3 in the U.S. for Nephrology by U.S. News and World Report!”
Great, I thought. What number are they for GI?
In the nearly 40 years I’ve worked in dermatology, our field has indeed changed. Cosmetic procedures and skin care products have taken on significant, sometimes dominant roles in various settings. Some changes seem excessive at first, even shady: Botox parties in private homes? Really? With time, these come to feel normal. Man caves and whiskey bars? If the public wants them, maybe they’re the new normal.
Cole Porter wrote:
“In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking.
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.”
He wrote those lines 80 years ago.
Painless Parker ’s self-promotion helped bring some positive changes in professional practice. Pitching to the public means that the profession cares what patients think. Back in the decorous, prudish, paternalistic old days, that was often not the case; the patient was supposed to accept whatever the experts offered and just shut up.
Trying to turn back the tide of social change is as useful as old King Canute trying to turn back the tide on the beach – an effort as pathetic as it is futile. As we age, older folks tend to become faintly ridiculous anyway. Why add negatives you can avoid?
Our office has a large exam room that’s not fully used. It contains a lightly used UVB unit.
Add comfy sofas? High-def flat-screen TVs? The NFL Network? Cigars and single-malt? What say you, colleagues?
Call me Ritzy Rockoff. It sings!
Death might not be proud, but I bet old Painless would.
Dr. Rockoff practices dermatology in Brookline, Mass., and is a longtime contributor to Dermatology News. He serves on the clinical faculty at Tufts University, Boston, and has taught senior medical students and other trainees for 30 years. His second book, “Act Like a Doctor, Think Like a Patient,” is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Write to him at dermnews@frontlinemedcom.com.
