The speaker is a doctor looking back from a jail cell. At graduation he promised himself he would practice medicine according to Christian ideals—being good, wise, brave, and helpful. But other doctors, he says, sensed that high-mindedness and froze him out. Only poor patients came to him, so he stayed poor while trying to support a wife and children and keep his moral mission alive. The strain crushed him. In desperation he invented the “Elixir of Youth,” a fraudulent product that landed him in jail and left him publicly branded a swindler and a crook. His voice mixes bitterness, self-justification, and exhaustion. The mood is bleak and ironic: a man who wanted to heal ends up disgraced, blaming a world that punished his ideals.
Dr. Siegfried Iseman — Summary
I said when they handed me my diploma, I said to myself I will be good And wise and brave and helpful to others; I said I will carry the Christian creed Into the practice of medicine! Somehow the world and the other doctors Know what’s in your heart as soon as you make This high-souled resolution. And the way of it is they starve you out. And no one comes to you but the poor. And you find too late that being a doctor Is just a way of making a living. And when you are poor and have to carry The Christian creed and wife and children All on your back, it is too much! That’s why I made the Elixir of Youth, Which landed me in the jail at Peoria Branded a swindler and a crook By the upright Federal Judge!