In his four years in medical school, a student has to assimilate a vast mass of information.
Perhaps no more than a single 30-minute lecture is devoted to menopause during his entire medical education. This neglect of the subject appears quite justified in the traditional view of menopause as a. normal part of aging. "’Why bother about something that can’t be helped?" is the prevailing logic.
After medical school, the pattern of neglect continues during internship. In my years as an intern, I never heard menopause symptoms mentioned. I noticed this because of my own early interest in the subject.
Interns and residents with probing medical minds find themselves pondering such dramatic problems as acute leukemia, diabetic coma, malignant hypertension, nephrosis, or chemotherapy for disseminated cancer.
In such a mental climate, menopause seems drab fare indeed. Later; these men enter practice knowing nothing and caring less about the menopausal cases they will encounter.
Against this discouraging background, it seems all the more fortunate that an increasing number of influential physicians are now rethinking the entire medical approach in the light of recent discoveries and the new possibility of complete cure.
These doctors have learned to treat rather than ignore one of our major medical problems.