The Latin title of the original “Gaudeamus Igitur” poem is taken
from the first line of a European medieval song, De Brevitate Vitae
(on the Shortness of Life), as below:
Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus
Post jucundum juventutem
Post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus.
Let us rejoice therefore
While we are young.
After a pleasant youth
After a troublesome old age
The earth will have us.
Ubi sunt qui ante nos
In mundo fuere?
Vadite ad superos
Transite in inferos
Hos si vis videre.
Where are they
Who were in the world before us?
You may cross over to heaven
You may go to hell
If you wish to see them.
Vita nostra brevis est
Brevi finietur.
Venit mors velociter
Rapit nos atrociter
Nemini parcetur.
Our life is brief
It will be finished shortly.
Death comes quickly
Atrociously, it snatches us away.
No one is spared.
Vivat academia
Vivant professores
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivat membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.
Long live the academy!
Long live the teachers!
Long live each male student!
Long live each female student!
May they always flourish!
Vivant omnes virgines
Faciles, formosae.
Vivant et mulieres
Tenerae amabiles
Bonae laboriosae.
Long live all maidens
Easy and beautiful!
Long live mature women also,
Tender and loveable
And full of good labor.
Vivant et republica
et qui illam regit.
Vivat nostra civitas,
Maecenatum caritas
Quae nos hic protegit.
Long live the State
And the One who rules it!
Long live our City
And the charity of benefactors
Which protects us here!
Pereat tristitia,
Pereant osores.
Pereat diabolus,
Quivis antiburschius
Atque irrisores.
(C. W. Kindeleben 1781)
Let sadness perish!
Let haters perish!
Let the devil perish!
Let whoever is against our school
Who laughs at it, perish!
John Stone’s very evocative poem “Gaudeamus Igitur” that deals
with the triumphs and paradoxes of practicing medicine was inspired
by the above medieval song. Its construction in which every line
begins with “For” or “Let” was written similar to “Jubilate Agno”
(“Rejoice in the Lamb”) by Christopher Smart, an 18th century poet,
in praise of his companion cat, Jeoffrey, while he was incarcerated in
a mental asylum. The poem resonates with anyone who takes care
of another fellow human being in some capacity but particularly
with the new physicians who will experience happiness and terror,
doubt and wisdom, clarity and stupidity, victory of regained health
and tragedy of death – and sometimes all of these emotions at once.
Dealing with knowing too much and too little hounds all clinicians:
“For this is the day you know too little.
Against the day when you will know too much
For you will be invincible and vulnerable in the same breath
which is the breath of your patients.”
There are occasions to feel elated and joyful (on saving someone’s
life or making a swift diagnosis) and there will be moments of depression and burn-out and some physicians will try to find solace
in addictive behavior:
“For there will be addictions: whiskey, tobacco, love/
For they will be difficult to cure/
For you yourself will pass the kidney stone of pain.”
“For there will be days of joy/
For there will be elevators of elation/
and you will walk triumphantly/
in purest joy/ along the halls of the hospital/
and say Yes to all the dark corners/ where no one is listening.”
The following haunting piece reminds us that we are all in the
same boat - physicians and patients - we will all become patients
one day, and we will all face the same end, “The Final Examination.”
“For this is the end of examinations
For this is the beginning of testing
For Death will give the final examination
and everyone will pass.”
The dread of not knowing in medicine is a perpetual reminder
of our ignorance as noted in this section of the poem:
“For there will be the arts
and some will call them soft data
whereas in fact they are the hard data by