Doctor’s Day

What the day is

Doctor's Day is observed on March 30. The date is not arbitrary: on that day in 1842 a country physician in Georgia removed a tumor from a patient's neck while the patient was unconscious from inhaled ether, and felt nothing.

Origin and background

It is difficult now to grasp what that changed. Before it, surgery was performed on people who were awake and restrained, and speed was the surgeon's central virtue because the operation could only last as long as a person could endure it. Whole categories of procedure were simply impossible, not for lack of skill but because nobody could survive being still for long enough.

Crawford Long, who performed that first operation, did not publish. He continued using ether quietly in his practice and only described his results in 1849, by which time a public demonstration in Boston in 1846 had announced anesthesia to the world and credit had settled elsewhere. The resulting priority dispute was bitter and ran for decades. The usual lesson drawn is that in medicine a result that is not published does not yet exist, because it cannot be checked, repeated or built upon by anyone else.

The observance itself began in 1933 in Winder, Georgia, organized by the wife of a physician, who chose the anniversary of Long's operation, sent cards and placed red carnations on the graves of doctors. The red carnation remains the day's symbol. It became a national observance in the United States in 1991.

Other countries mark their own doctors' days on entirely different dates, usually tied to a local figure.

How to take part

• Thank a doctor who has looked after you or your family, in writing if you can.
• Wear or send a red carnation, which is the day's traditional symbol.
• Read about surgery before anesthesia, which makes the date's significance obvious.
• Remember the staff who are not doctors, who have their own days elsewhere in the year.