This course explores the connection between medicine and literature, largely (but not exclusively) through the works of a selection of well-known doctors-turned-writers.
How does the practice of medicine, with its diagnostic emphasis, its balance of rationality and empathy, and its relentless proximity to human weakness and mortality affect the doctor/writer’s literary and philosophical concerns? Conversely, how might the reflective, imaginative craft of writing influence the practice of medicine? More specific questions to be explored might include: how do William Carlos Williams’ twin vocations of rural doctor and poet set him apart from his literary contemporaries? How does Walker Percy’s career as a pathologist prepare him to examine 20th century America in his writing? How might Holmes and Watson represent the balance doctors must strike between reason and empathy in the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle? What happens when a doctor becomes a patient? How does it change the way he or she approaches mortality? Why is illness such a powerful cultural and literary metaphor? Can a culture or a nation be “sick”, in a sense? If so, who is best equipped to diagnose it?
