On Biopsies

The first biopsy was said to have been performed
by the surgeon and physician Albucasis of Córdoba 
in Moorish Spain, in the Middle Ages— Some of his 
areas of specialization included cauterization 
and the removal of foreign objects from the ear,
throat, and other parts of the body. Considering 
surgery to be the highest form of medical practice, 
he invented hundreds of surgical instruments 
which are illustrated  and described in his thirty-
volume medical encyclopedia, translated into Latin
as Liber Theoricae: clamps and scalpels, raked
retractors, stents and saws. He tells of attending
to a slave girl who had tried to end her life—
he found her bellowing like a sacrifice that has had 
its throat cut, and straightaway worked to suture
the wound. Eventually, the cut healed; the girl 
was restored to health, despite a lowering 
in the timbre of her voice. What amazes me is not 
how many branches of medicine the good doctor 
practiced, but how much of an authority he had in each 
one. Years ago, when my doctor became concerned 
about a rubbery area in my right breast, she sent me 
for a fine needle aspiration; when that did not apparently 
yield anything obvious, I was sent for more scans and tests. 
More recently, my husband had a surgical biopsy for which
he was put under general anesthesia. He spent over 
a week on a soft diet, and could barely mumble words. 
The results came back inconclusive—meaning 
there's no certainty that the excision site harbors 
anything more malevolent than a grainy dullness. Of course 
there was pain, pain being the measure by which we continue 
to be reminded that we are not gods, that we are made of flesh.