Rx: Relief and Remedies
Dr. Margarita Benítez prescribes the Humanities during quarantine
La Dra. Margarita Benítez prescribe las Humanidades durante la cuarentena
Photo: Angelo Rosa
NOTA: La versión original en español de este artículo fue publicada como "LAS HUMANIDADES, ALIVIO Y REMEDIO" por la Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades (23 de marzo de 2020) y como columna de opinión en El Nuevo Día (24 de marzo de 2020).
NOTE: Original Spanish-language versions of this article were published as "LAS HUMANIDADES, ALIVIO Y REMEDIO" by Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades (March 23, 2020) and as an op-ed in El Nuevo Día (March 24, 2020).
The year 2020 has wasted no time!
In Puerto Rico, The Three Kings brought us earthquakes, with tremors and more than 3,000 aftershocks, some of which still continue.
Now for Lent, we are living -- those of us who still have a roof - under a quarantine whose effectiveness is as uncertain as its duration. It has just been extended until at least April 12, Easter Sunday, which will be held behind closed doors in churches without people.
“The things you will see, Sancho [Cosas veredes, Sancho],” as Don Quixote never said, just as he never said, “They bark, thus we ride [Ladran, pues cabalgamos],” as much as it seems to us that he should have said it, because those words synthesize a profound truth. I invite you to reread Don Quixote to see if you can find it.
The forced confinement to which both prudence and public power oblige us has given us the opportunity to reunite with several formative texts. When was the last time we glanced at Aristotle, and at other texts we’ve long vowed to read, some of which have become especially relevant, given our current circumstances (for example, The Plague by Albert Camus and Love in the Times of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez)?
As far back as the 17th century, the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo refers to the solitary—and well-accompanied—pleasure of reading:
Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos,
Con pocos, pero doctos, libros juntos,
Vivo en conversación con los difuntos,
y escucho con mis ojos a los muertos.
Si no siempre entendidos, siempre abiertos,
enmiendan o fecundan mis asuntos,
y en músicos callados contrapuntos
al sueño de la vida hablan despiertos.
Retired to the peace of this deserted place
Together with a few but learned books
I live in conversation with those passed away,
And with my eyes listen to the dead.
If not always understood, the books are ever open.
They either correct or fertilize my ideas.
And in silent contrapuntal music
In life's sleep they speak, awake.
Translation by Dennis Mangan
How would we live without poetry? And there are still two-thirds to savor in this sonnet!
Of course, in the Bible, there is no lack of epidemics, pestilence, and plagues as punishments and tests from the Lord for sinners, prophets, and diverse leaders. Nor should one read only about the epidemics, although these texts may be, like many of the readings mentioned, allegories that allude to even more complex experiences.
During this quarantine--which puts us face-to-face with the precariousness of everything that surrounds us, which points to the mysteries of life and death, and locks us up with ourselves--I suggest returning to the great works of literature that have given meaning to our lives. For many of us, these are readings from Bible, whether it be to lament our luck with the Book of Job; find calm and meaning in the reiterations of Ecclesiastes; find hope in the promise of Psalm 30 (“joy comes with the morning”); revive us with the erotic mystique of the Song of Songs; or motivate us to serve our neighbor after rereading the Gospels.
An initial diversion might be to trace the biblical allusions of our great poet Luis Lloréns Torres when he says in the “Song of the Antilles [Canción de las Antillas]”:
Nuestro escudo engasta perlas del dolor de Jeremías,
Y esmeraldas de las hondas profecías de Isaías.
He aquí el címbalo de alas, más acá de las etiópicas bahías
Que enviara en vasos de árboles al mar su legado.
Our shield’s enwrought with Jeremiah’s pearls of pain
and all the emeralds of Isaiah’s deep prophecies.
Here you have the winged cymbal
that, this side of Ethiope’s bays,
sent all its patrimony
in tree vessels to the sea.
Translation by Roberto Márquez,
Puerto Rican Poetry: An Anthology from Aboriginal to Contemporary Times
It’s what I plan to do when I finish writing these lines.
These days, when we depend on the knowledge of doctors and their commitment to that oath of Hippocrates with which they began their career path, a proposal by the admirable surgeon and professor Dr. Carlos Santiago Delpín, entitled "The humanized doctor and medical ethics," takes on special significance where it states: “the foundation of the doctor's vocation...is Compassion,” one that is born from understanding of and solidarity towards the pain and fear of others. To achieve understanding, which is a requirement for compassion, Dr. Santiago Delpín proposes reading and reflection of great works of world literature and philosophy.
Inaugural faculty, University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, 1950. Source: Universidad de Puerto Rico
“[It is essential] to broaden the sense of responsibility towards this land, towards pain, suffering, and disease”
—Chancellor Jaime Benítez, addressing the first class of the UPR School of Medicine in 1950
In early March of 2020, when we were still living without quarantine, I had the privilege of accompanying the highly respected and dynamic professors of the Medical Sciences Campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Dr. Santiago Delpín and Dr. América Facundo, to a meeting with Dr. Agustín Rodríguez, Dean of the UPR School of Medicine. We talked about the centrality of the Humanities, particularly about ethics in the training of future doctors. It is essential "to broaden the sense of responsibility towards this land, towards pain, suffering, and disease," as former chancellor Jaime Benítez exhorted the first class of the School in 1950. Dean Rodríguez fully agreed with our proposals, and lo and behold, days later and 70 years after the founding of the School, we see its associated doctors - from the chancellor to the students - assume their responsibility before this suffering country in order to attend to and alleviate the suffering and the disease that surround us.
Let us trust in the ethics and commitment of our medical class, in its fidelity to the Hippocratic Oath and to the example of their great teachers, scholars, and practitioners of humanistic values. They will illuminate the path that will get us out of this labyrinth.
