A few weeks ago, Hutton joined several other physicians, residents, and others in a sunny conference room in Johns Hopkins’s pediatric wing. Led by the pediatrics and internal medicine resident Ben Oldfield and the University of Maryland English professor Lauren Small, the group was there to discuss the various masks doctors wear. These masks are both metaphorical—in that doctors must maintain game faces even when things look grim—and literal, in the sense that physicians, in part to inspire confidence in their abilities, clothe themselves in decidedly non-civilian garb like white coats, scrubs, and actual surgical masks.

Small and Oldfied started hosting these meetings, called “AfterWards,” about a year and a half ago. Each month, they send out a blast email to everyone in Hopkins’s pediatrics department. Whoever shows up spends an hour discussing some topic in literature or culture and then doing a short writing exercise. The writings aren’t read or shared; the exercise is meant to be more therapy than art.

“Having a focused discussion on ... bearing witness to suffering can undo the stopcock on that emotional charge,” Oldfield said. “The other goal is that being a good storyteller will help you advocate for your patients.”

The day I joined the group, Small kicked things off by showing the room this picture of a Yupik healer—with his elaborate mask and large hands—from 1890s Alaska:

Johns Hopkins

“The use of masks in healing rituals is part of the culture of shamanism,” she explained. “The premise is that a person who is ill has lost a part of his or her soul. A shaman enters into a trance, and he will travel to the spiritual world, where he will struggle to retrieve a part of the ailing person's soul, and return it to him or her. The restoration of the soul is what results in the healing.”

While she spoke, the group passed around three different masks that Small had collected in her travels. Hutton held one of them—a white mask with rabbit ears—up to her face.

“The mask is revealing his connection to the spiritual world,” Small continued. “It's the source of his healing power. The question we're going to ask today is if any of you in this room are modern-day shamans.”

Next, Oldfield clicked to a new slide featuring John Singer Sargent's 1905 portrait of the four founding physicians of Hopkins: William Welch, William Osler, William Halsted, and Howard Kelly.

John Singer Sargent / Johns Hopkins

“Back then, being a physician was not as academic as it is today,” Oldfield said. “Going to medical school was just a matter of paying for individual lectures.”

At the time, the only entrance requirement of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, which Welch attended, was that the applicant be able to read and write. And so, just a few decades after germ theory had gained acceptance, the four doctors cloaked themselves in black robes and projected competence the best they could.