The practice of medicine has at its core the unique task of documenting humanity, which has also been the purpose of literature since time immemorial. It should come as no surprise then, that so many physicians have transitioned seamlessly from the art of medicine to the art of writing. As a result, the anthology of medical literature has been growing continuously, with contributions from both medical providers as well as those they care for. In the following discourse, I shall try to elucidate the purpose and value of this ever-expanding corpus. Doctors and patients both seek the truth, but they take different paths. By creating that which all humans crave, namely mutual recognition and a feeling of shared experience, literature is able to bridge that gap and at the same time providing therapeutic nourishment for both physicians and patients.
Medical diagnosis is not always an open and shut case. In fact, it often requires the keen observational skills of the physician. None are as skilled at detailing observations as William Carlos Williams, and perhaps none are as concerned with seeking the truth in patients. Williams’ story
The Girl with the Pimply Face is one example of the physician’s scrutiny. He took in not only the object of the house call, but the whole family as well. Of the sister, the main character, Williams wrote, “She was just a child but nobody was putting anything over on her if she knew it, yet the real thing about her was the complete lack of the rotten smell of a liar. She wasn’t in the least presumptive. Just straight”(228). And of the parents, “I realized finally that she had been drinking. I turned toward the man, looking a good bit like the sun at noonday and as indifferent, then back to the woman and I felt deeply sorry for her”(236). Williams is a seasoned physician, and his stories frequently highlight what’s beyond the narrow pathological presentation of the patient. In doing so with precision and detail, he brings the reader into his clinical reasoning that includes what he describes in The Practice as “the poetry of life”(57).
In writing about their experiences, physicians are also attempting to grapple with their own responses during the process of patient care. In Lawrence Grouse’s
The Lie, the attending physician is asked by his patient to give an honest prognosis. He is conflicted, thinking, “I am already fond of her an I do not want to lie. I squeeze her hand and smile. I am unsure how she will do”(40), but ultimately tells the patient a lie, that she will be fine. When the patient recovers, weeks later, the doctor lets the secret out because he “can’t help bragging”(41). The story ends abruptly with Annie’s surprise and anger.
Annie seemed shocked to hear this. She looks at me angrily and says, “Don’t you remember? You said you were sure I would live. I remembered that promise all the time! I put a great deal of weight on what you said, and you…” Suddenly, for the first time since the accident, and to everyone’s surprise, tears are in her eyes and she is weeping; she is inconsolable because I lied to her. (41)
The ending leaves us wondering, what was the purpose of the story? Who was the audience? It is at the same time speaking to us and not to us, an introspective afterthought. Perhaps the vignette was written years later, perhaps out of an absolution of guilt. Physician-writers such as Peter Pereira and Emily Transue would both agree with this characterization. Whether such writing serve as a lesson to those who come in their wake is unimportant; instead, what usually bears fruit is the attempt to understand their emotions surrounding a memorable patient.
While physicians are writing about the patients’ stories that moved them, the patients themselves have an interpretation of their illness narratives and the doctors who listened. Just as physicians are searching for the underlying truth, patients are seeking to understand their illness and to confront their mortality. Raymond Carver’s poem,
What the Doctor Said, is his account of receiving a diagnosis of lung cancer. In just a few short lines, the patient’s response changes from a flippant, almost joking remark of “I’m glad I wouldn’t want to know/about any more being there than that” to the stunning effect as the gravity of the news takes hold, “I said Amen and he said something else/I didn’t catch and not knowing what else to do/ and not wanting him to have to repeat it/and me to have to fully digest it/I just looked at him”(302). The brevity and rapid cadence of the poem conveys both the fleeting experience of a terminal diagnosis and the whirlwind confusion of what has just passed. The patient leaves the room in a stupor, “I may even have thanked him habit being so strong”(302).
Doctors and patients travel different paths in understanding the illness that confronts them. But literature is where their paths meet. And herein lies the therapy of shared company. The comforts of mutual experience is universal, as Eduardo Galeano describes in his
Book of Embraces:
Yes, indeed: however hurt and shattered one might be, one can always find contemporaries anywhere in time, and compatriots anywhere in space. And whenever this happens, and for as long as it lasts, one is lucky to feel one is something in the infinite loneliness of the universe: something more than a ridiculous speck of dust, more than just a fleeting moment. (245)
A most striking example of this mutual reflection can be found in William Carlos Williams’
The Practice and Anatole Broyard’s
Doctor Talk to Me. Williams writes, as the physician: “We begin to see that the underlying meaning of all they want to tell us and have always failed to communicate is the poem, the poem which their lives are being lived to realize”(57). To which Anatole Broyard seemingly echoes, from a patient’s perspective: “Inside every patient, there is a poet trying to get out. My ideal doctor would “read” my poetry, my literature”(169). The rhapsody continues with astonishing reciprocity. Williams’ call for “the pursuit of a rare element which may appear at any time, at any place, at a glance...Mutual recognition [flaring up] at a moment’s notice”(55). Broyard is ready with, “The patient is always on the brink of revelation, and he needs someone who can recognize it when it comes”(169). Williams and Broyard agree, nearly half a century apart, that “there is no need for us to be such strangers to each other,” (Williams, 55) that by “letting the sick man into his heart…he can share, as few others can, the wonder, terror, and exaltation of being on the edge of being, between the natural and the supernatural”(Broyard, 172).
Literature serves a second purpose for those who experience medicine—that is to educate the physician and the patient about each other, thereby bridging a gap that is never crossed at the bedside. EM Forster once wrote, in
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951), “What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it toward the condition of the man who wrote.” Writing can be deeply introspective. It offers a window on the patient’s soul that cannot be auscultated or palpated, a connection with the physician that can never be reached despite infinite questioning by the patient.
Physicians are seen as natural storytellers. But more generally, Man is a natural storyteller. What makes the medical partnership unique is that the shared experience, filtered through the words of the caretaker and the patient, reveals undiscovered commonalities. Each, in searching for the truth in illness, finds through literature the truth of humanity, the secret to being a good doctor, the key to being a good patient. To leave you with a final excerpt from Eduardo Galeano,
Why does one write, if not to put one’s pieces together? From the moment we enter school or church, fishermen of the Colombian coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, feeling-thinking, to define language that speaks the truth. (121)
Through their writing, physicians and patients are simply composing different stanzas of the same poem.
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Works Cited:
Broyard, Anatole. “Doctor, Talk to Me.” In On Doctoring: stories, poems, essays, edited by Richard Reynolds and John Stone, with Louis LaCivita Nixon and Delese Wear, 166-172. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Carver, Raymond. “What the Doctor Said.” In On Doctoring: stories, poems, essays, edited by Richard Reynolds and John Stone, with Louis LaCivita Nixon and Delese Wear, 302. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Galeano, Eduardo. The Book of Embraces. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.
Grouse, Lawrence. “The Lie.” In A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology, edited by Robert Coles and Randy Testa with Joeseph O’Donnell, Penny Armstrong and M. Brownell Anderson, 39-41. New York: The New Press, 2002.
Williams, William Carlos. “The Girl with the Pimply Face.” In A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology, edited by Robert Coles and Randy Testa with Joseph O’Donnell, Penny Armstrong and M. Brownell Anderson, 226-238. New York: The New Press, 2002.
Williams, William Carlos. “The Practice.” In On Doctoring: stories, poems, essays, edited by Richard Reynolds and John Stone, with Louis LaCivita Nixon and Delese Wear, 52-58 . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.