For This Is the Beginning, Therefore, Let Us Rejoice

“ … For what matters finally is how the human spirit is spent … For this is the beginning … Therefore, let us rejoice …  Gaudeamus igitur.   John Stone, MD from his poem “Gaudeamus Igitur”

In 1982, cardiologist, essayist, poet and professor John Stone, MD, delivered the medical school graduation address for the class of Emory University in the form of a poem titled “Gaudeamus Igitur” which is translated as “therefore, let us rejoice.”  That same poem was published in JAMA in April of 1983, and this year marks the 40th anniversary of it being shared with a wider audience.

As a writer, Dr. Stone is perhaps best known for On D octoring: Stories, Poems, Essays (1991), an anthology of literature and medicine that he co-edited with Richard Reynolds, former executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Since 1991, every U.S. medical student has received a copy of this book as a gift from the foundation and it has served as a reminder to a generation of medical students that anchoring ourselves in the humanities will make us much better in our calling to the art and science of the practice of medicine.  Unfortunately (and ironically), the poem Gaudeamus Igitur was not included in this anthology. 

Fortunately for us, the poem lives on, most recently republished along with a commentary in the June 9 issue of JAMA.  Below are excerpts from the poem and you can find full poem here.  As you read the excerpts, and hopefully the entire poem, consider how you might recapture or rekindle some of the joy, wonderment, humility, and love that you experienced as a newly minted physician (or other clinician), whenever that might have been for you.   

For the trivial will trap you and the important escape you
For the Committee will be unable to resolve the question
For there will be the arts
      and some will call them
      soft data
      whereas in fact they are the hard data
      by which our lives are lived
For everyone comes to the arts too late
For you can be trained to listen only for the oboe
      out of the whole orchestra
For you may need to strain to hear the voice of the patient
      in the thin reed of his crying
For you will learn to see most acutely out of
      the corner of your eye
      to hear best with your inner ear
For there are late signs and early signs
For the patient's story will come to you
      like hunger, like thirst
For you will know the answer
      like second nature, like first
For the patient will live
      and you will try to understand
For you will be amazed
      or the patient will not live
      and you will try to understand
For you will be baffled
For you will try to explain both, either, to the family
For there will be laying on of hands
      and the letting go
For love is what death would always intend if it had the choice …

For the heart will lead
For the head will explain
      but the final common pathway is the heart
      whatever kingdom may come
For what matters finally is how the human spirit is spent …

For this is the beginning
      Therefore, let us rejoice
      Gaudeamus igitur.