Proust questionnaire: Malcolm Brigden, MD

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 53, No. 6, July August 2011, Page 310 Proust for Physicians

Portrair cartoon of Malcolm Brigden

Dr Brigden is medical director of the Algoma district cancer program in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. He practised hematology and oncology in BC for 25 years.

What profession might you have pursued, if not for medicine?
Ship’s captain or professional mountain guide.

Which talent would you most like to have?
A completely photographic memory.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
To make it to age 65 well nourished without having been hunted or eaten by anything else.

Who are your heroes?
My teachers, colleagues, and students.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Unctuousness or foppery.

What characteristic do your favorite patients share?
Passion for life coupled with lively curiosity.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
To learn something arcane or new on a daily basis.

What is your greatest fear?
To have lived an unexamined life.

Which living physician do you most admire?
Anyone with the gumption to make it through medical school, residency, or both.

What is your favorite activity?
Spending meaningful time with my wife and extended family.

On what occasion do you lie?
To preserve dignity of the dying.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
According to my wife: “cool!”

What medical advance do you most anticipate?
Superconductivity at room temperature—it will change the world as we know it.

What is your most marked characteristic?
Cautious pragmatism.

What do you most value in your colleagues?
Enthusiasm and frankness.

Who are your favorite writers?
John Donne, Thomas Pynchon, Jo­seph Heller, William Manchester. 

What is your greatest regret?
Not to have traveled more in my youth.

How would you like to die?
Reading Cicero in the original after an intensive 6-month Latin update at Oxford or Cambridge.

What is your motto?
Sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago!

Malcolm Brigden, MDCM, FRCPC, FACP,. Proust questionnaire: Malcolm Brigden, MD. BCMJ, Vol. 53, No. 6, July, August, 2011, Page(s) 310 - Proust for Physicians.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Arnie Sarkar says: reply

Dr Malcolm Brigden has a great sense of humor.

Leave a Reply