Nope, I’m not writing a Dark Romance about a “physician by day, master pimp by night.” In this instance, “pimping” refers to the aggressive, rapid-fire questioning of a medical student or resident by an attending physician. A Boy and his Dog, my upcoming medical / military story, contains an episode of this.
“Pimping” is a tool used by a supervising doctor, intended to teach young physicians-in-training by oral questioning, generally in front of other members of the team.
Pimping consists of aggressive, rapid-fire questions, often to the point of humiliation of the young trainee, occasionally crossing the line to outright sadistic. Advocates consider pimping a chance to not only see a young physician’s knowledge but also as measure of mental quickness and emotional toughness. Hard-core pimping is going out of vogue now, in a shift to kinder, gentler medical training, but its origins are venerable, dating back to the rhetoric of Socrates’ day.
The earliest reference to pimping is attributed to Harvey, one of the early giants in the pre-modern medical area, in London in 1628. He lamented his students’ lack of enthusiasm for learning the circulation of the blood in this letter: ‘They know nothing of Natural Philosophy, these pin-heads. Drunkards, sloths, their bellies filled with Mead and Ale. O that I might see them pimped!’
He had just published his treatise on the circulation of human blood, De Motu Cordis, earlier that year, so the subject was near to his heart. Harvey was a bigshot: the personal physician of King James I, and also a notable skeptic regarding the witchcraft trials prevalent at the time. In 1634, he was appointed an investigator for a purported witch in Newgate. He visited the woman, claiming to be a wizard, and they discussed craft. He asked if she had a familiar, and she set down a saucer of milk for her toad, who drank it.
Luckily for her, instead of condemning her as a witch on the spot, he asked her to fetch some ale for them, and while she was at the market, he killed the toad, dissected it, and concluded that it was an ordinary creature, not supernatural in any way. Her anger at the death of her pet was quelled when he revealed his purpose there, and she realized she got off easy.
The term pimping spread; in 1889, Koch recorded a series of ‘Puempfrage’ or ‘pimp questions’ to use on his rounds in Heidelberg. Unpublished notes made by Abraham Flexner on his visit to Johns Hopkins in 1916 yield the first American reference: ‘Rounded with Osler today. Riddles house officers with questions. Like a Gatling gun. Welch says students call it “pimping.” Delightful.’
It’s not “delightful” to be on the receiving end, I can tell you! I once endured a pimp session so tough that when the attending left the room, my colleagues whispered, “Why does he hate you so much?”
What IS delightful? A Boy and his Dog is out to beta readers! I’ll post some of their comments soon. 
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