Many people will also think of another medical student, Lu Xun, who took literature as his profession a hundred years ago. From his ambition to save people to studying medicine, he can't save China people, from being helpless to shouting in an iron house to not forgiving anyone. What did he go through?
Lu Xun who keeps "changing majors"
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Lu Xun had two career changes in his life: one was "abandoning mines to study medicine"-Lu Xun studied in Nanjing Mine Road School in middle school and later went to Japan to study. At first, he still maintained his interest in mining. He once co-edited a book "Mineral Records of China" with his classmates, but 1904-year-old Lu Xun went to Sendai Medical College to study medicine at the age of 24; After studying for less than two years, 1906 automatically dropped out of school and "abandoned medicine and joined the literature".
Lu Xun's career change is probably hard for China people to understand today. I saw a middle school student write a composition specially for this purpose, and made such an evaluation from the perspective of "modern people": "The mining he studied is not a hot major, but' lost at the starting line'; There is no direct employment after learning mining, and it is not based on society earlier; What a waste of youth to study mining and medicine and change careers halfway! After returning from studying abroad, he has never been employed in medicine and has become an unemployed youth; After that, I abandoned medicine and went to literature-the major was wrong; After the article, I wrote neither government articles nor traditional classical Chinese, and even attacked the government and criticized the current shortcomings. I am a reactionary youth, I am a reactionary youth with turbulent life and unstable income! "
The middle school student's "black humor" aroused our curiosity: Why did Lu Xun "abandon me and study medicine"? Why did you "abandon medicine and join literature" later? This is a very interesting research topic and an interesting topic.
Let's talk about why Lu Xun studied medicine. He once talked about his "medical dream": "My dream is very happy. I am going to graduate and come back to treat the pain of patients who have been misdiagnosed like my father. I went to be a military doctor during the war to publicize the reform beliefs of the people of China. " Here, there are two meanings. First of all, this is Lu Xun's personal childhood traumatic memory.
Lu Xun never wrote his mother, but he even wrote two articles about his father: one is called "Five Cabins Club", which tells how his father forced himself to endorse, and he felt the gap between father and son, which made him unforgettable and unforgettable;
The other is "Father's Disease", which was written until his father died. He suddenly realized the same unforgettable blood relationship between father and son, but he didn't have time to express his love to his father. He could only shout loudly: "Father! Father! ! "The father replied with difficulty ... Don't shout. ..... no ... ""I "still cried:" Dad! ! ! "Until my father swallowed his breath. Many years later, Lu Xun also heard his crying at that time. "Every time I heard it, I felt that this was my biggest mistake to my father," because it disturbed my father's final peace! This is a more unforgettable guilt and eternal pain!
Lu Xun's father Zhou Boyi and his mother Lu Rui.
It can be said that it is this unforgettable life trauma and childhood memory that has become the most important driving force for Lu Xun to "abandon mines to study medicine" and western medicine. Because in his view, his father died young at the age of 37 because of the delay of Chinese medicine. At that time, Lu Xun was only 15 years old. Therefore, Lu Xun has a lifelong prejudice against Chinese medicine, and he also has a good impression and even respect for Western medicine.
In "Father's Disease", after recalling the absurdity and misunderstanding of quack doctors in detail, he deeply recalled that a western doctor told him that the duty of a doctor is "to cure the incurable, and to die without pain". From this, he saw the scientificity and humanity of western medicine, and perhaps it was this view of western medicine that made him choose medicine.
Of course, Lu Xun also studied medicine for reasons of the times, which was his dream of "joining the army in wartime". Researchers tell us that after the defeat of the Opium War, especially the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, China people generally felt a strong sense of national crisis. They named themselves "the sick man of East Asia" and thought that China was terminally ill and was in danger of death at any time.
The "sick man of East Asia" is weak first. In this way, keeping fit has become the top priority of saving the country. Cai E in the military field, Zhang Jian in the commercial field, Cai Yuanpei in the academic field, and other representatives from all walks of life all advocate "national transportation", that is, training China people into new citizens with sound physique and martial spirit. Lu Xun's dream of being a military doctor was obviously influenced by such a "national movement".
Some scholars said: "China in the early 20th century really had a high degree of infatuation and persistence with his body. Since the generation of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, intellectuals have been trying to promote various physical transformation movements with an attitude of giving up who I am. " In this way, doctors naturally become the most valued and respected profession, and studying medicine has become the dream of countless Lu Xun-style patriotic young people. Moreover, this respect for medical doctors lasted for almost a century, and it didn't change until the new century, so many doctors don't want their children to study medicine-this is a problem that needs to be discussed separately.
What needs to be added is that not only studying medicine has become a fashion, but sports have also been vigorously promoted. There is also the popular "Foot Movement" in the early 20th century. Women's liberation should start from liberating their feet. When Lu Xun later talked about the motivation of studying medicine, besides his father's illness, there was another reason: "helping women's feet in China". What moved him was "the fact that most of the Meiji Restoration in Japan originated from Western medicine". At that time, Japan was considered as a "good student" studying western medicine, so if you want to study western medicine, you should also come to Japan to study.
Then, why did Lu Xun later abandon medicine and join the literature? In fact, soon after Lu Xun arrived in Sendai, he felt unable to adapt to the study and life of medical students. In a letter to his old classmates, he complained: "I am too busy with my lessons at school to rest every day." It started at 7 o'clock and ended at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. The tree people started. They were right.
The subjects taught are physics, chemistry, anatomy, organization and German, so we should spend our spare time. Histology and anatomy, both nouns are in Latin, only B, and I finished reciting them on the same day, and my brain was exhausted. "He added:" At school, homework is only for memory, not thinking. If you don't study for a long time, your brain will be paralyzed. Four years later, I was afraid of being like a puppet. "What he is particularly dissatisfied with is that his homework is too tight and he has no time to read translated literary works." From time to time, he can only cultivate his own knowledge and can't stand aside. "Hate is hate!"
His literature's imagination and active thinking power are obviously not suitable for rigid, strict and accurate medical learning mode and thinking characteristics. The biggest headache is autopsy. He complained to his old friend Xu Shoushang: "At first, I felt quite uneasy. Especially for women and babies, there is often an unbearable sense of destruction. " He also told this old friend: "How smart the fetus is in the mother's body, how dark the miners' charcoal lungs are, and how cruel the parents' willow leaf disease is to their children." "Wait a minute.
Lu Xun is too soft-hearted and emotional, and obviously does not have the calmness necessary for medicine. More interestingly, in recent years, the anatomical drawings painted by Lu Xun have been found in Japan. People are surprised to find that Lu Xun deliberately changed many human parts in order to make people look "more beautiful". The vision and interest of such an aesthetician are too far away from scientists.
Mr. Fujino Genkuro, an anatomy teacher called "mentor" by Lu Xun, knows him best. He said that "studying medicine is probably not his inner purpose". Lu Xun belongs to literature in essence; Studying medicine is more out of responsibility for family and China people. There are inherent reasons and logic for him to abandon medicine and pursue literature.
Of course, external stimulation is also very important and cannot be ignored. As a result, there is the so-called "slide incident" that everyone is familiar with. Lu Xun himself recalled that in microbiology class, teachers often used movies to demonstrate and sometimes showed some current affairs movies.
At that time, during the Sino-Russian War, one day, Lu Xun suddenly saw on the screen that "many Japanese people I haven't seen for a long time, one tied in the middle and many standing around, were as strong and showed numbness." According to the explanation, it was tied to a Russian military detective who was about to be beheaded by the Japanese army, surrounded by people who came to enjoy this spectacular event. "
Lu Xun was greatly stimulated, and his medical dream was shattered: "From that time on, I felt that medicine was not an important matter. All stupid and weak citizens, no matter how healthy and strong they are, can only do meaningless propaganda materials and audiences. There is no need to think that death is unfortunate. Therefore, our first task is to change their spirit, and those who are good at changing their spirit. At that time, I thought it was natural to advocate literature and art, so I wanted to advocate the literary movement.
"-by the way, until today, people have not found this slide mentioned by Lu Xun; So some people think that the "slide story" described by Lu Xun here may be just a literary summary of Lu Xun. However, it is undeniable that this is a basic fact: it also pays attention to people's health, but its focus has shifted from physical health to psychological and spiritual health; Medical problems have been transformed into literary problems and humanistic problems.
He said to Xu Shoushang, who knows each other best: "Can China's nerds and bad nerds be cured by medicine?" Before this, there was such a discussion between them: (1) What is the ideal human nature? (2) What is China's national character lacking most? (3) What is the root cause? Xu Shoushang also recalled that what they felt most in the discussion was that "what our nation lacks most is sincerity and love".
Therefore, some researchers put forward that "sincerity and love" are the core of Lu Xun's thought and spirit. That year he studied medicine with "sincerity and love". Now, it is a fundamental change to transform and save the national character with the heart of "sincere love" However, there is still an inherent unity between "medicine" and "literature".
This has formed Lu Xun's literary view of "transforming the national character of saving the nation": literature "must be for life" and improve this life, "so my material is taken from the unfortunate in the morbid society, which is intended to expose suffering and attract medical attention". The medical terms here, such as "illness", "suffering" and "healing", all become metaphors, which not only show the communication between medicine and literature in Lu Xun's field of vision, but also imply the sociological and political significance of medicine itself.
In addition, the researcher noticed that this literary view of "healing" occupies a special and important position in China's modern literature. Many modern literary works are set in the hospital, full of metaphors of disease and death, such as Ding Ling's In the Hospital, Ba Jin's The Fourth Ward, etc. These are not accidental.