Fool or Physician: The Memoirs of a Sceptical Doctor by Anthony Daniels

You may know him under his pen name of Theodore Dalrymple. He wasn't keen on becoming a doctor; he wanted to be a philosopher. He started out quite naive about medicine, society, and himself.

He tried for a warts and all narrative, and some of his mistakes leave you wincing. He was not satisfied with any place for long, and picked exotic places to travel, sometimes with no job lined up but confident that a doctor can always find work. Somehow (he doesn't go into his motives for moving much), he kept coming back to situations that were hard. At the end he is back at a psychiatric hospital.

The Amazon site has a good anecdote from the book; here's how it starts.

‘I only had ten cans yesterday, doc,’ he said. ‘And today I haven’t had any. I just don’t feel like it. Today’s the first day in ten years I haven’t had a drink.’

I looked at him. He was yellow; he had hepatitis.

I envy him his memory for names and people. I gather he doesn't like missionaries much. And I'm glad I didn't try to become a doctor.

Read it.