In 1991, I went on an archaeological tour of Mediterranean sites and was intrigued by the overwhelming evidence of a time when both men and women worshipped goddesses. By the time Judaism, Christianity, and Islam became the West's only three religions, goddesses had disappeared. It occurred to me that this event coincided with the time when people were learning to read and write. I suspected that there was something in the way people learned this new skill that reconfigured their brains. I hypothesized that the demise of the goddess was an inside job.
Surgery is very yang and a little yin, writing is very yin and a little yang.
Being both a writer and a surgeon provides a considerable balance to my life. Also, surgeons are steeped in science and are trained in a very left-brained manner early on. But the actual practice of surgery is very right-brained. It is tactile, intuitive, and very visual- spatial. Further, surgeons are the essence of hunter-killers seeking and rooting out disease literally with their hands.