430
Commentary A Humanistic Library for Physicians by Physicians JAMES K. GUDE, MD, Santa Rosa, California Dr James Gude trained at Yale and Stanford and has been chair of the residency and library committees at the Community Hospital of Sonoma County for years. A former Fulbright scholar, he practices pulmonary and critical care medicine, teaches with passion and award-winning skill, savors the history of medicine, and lectures widely on subjects ranging from Greek, Roman, Arabic, and Chinese medicine to medical ethics and physical diagnosis. We present an annotated list ofsome ofhisfavorite physician-authors and their work. We hope it inspires you and e-xpands your horizons. Guenter Risse, MD, in his accompanying editorial, * wishes you "Bon Appetit! " We hope you will also send us a list ofyourfavorites; we will publish follow-ups from time to time. THE EDITORS
E very physician needs a humanistic library for support and discovery. There are two ways of defining humanism in medicine. The first is to define a humanistic physician as [O]ne who understands patients as people and considers their psychological and social features in his or her assessments and treatments, who is compassionate and ethically sensitive, and who communicates compassion and sensitivity warmly and effectively to patients. I
The second is to call forth the liberal arts traditions in medicine of philosophy, prose, and poetry centered on the human condition.2 William Carlos Williams (1883 to 1963) blended a compassionate caring for his patients with prose and poetry. He wrote, That is why as a writer I have never felt that medicine interfered with me but rather that it was my very food and drink, the very thing which made it possible for me to write. Was I not interested in man? I could touch it, smell it. It was myself, naked, just as it was, without a lie telling itself to me in its own terms.3tP120)
I share with you 13 books written by physicians in this liberal arts tradition of medicine. Humanistic Writings of Physicians FranVois Rabelais (1494-1553) was a monk and then a physician who wrote with exaggerated humor and biting satire about the conflict between Scholasticism and Humanism. His Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534) are works ahead of their time. John Locke (1632-1704) was a philosopher and physician who made bedside rounds with Thomas Sydenham, the English Hippocrates. Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1764) is a classic defense of the Western liberal constitutional state with the natural right of private property. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), a writer and physician, created a comedy in She Stoops to Conquer (1773) that presented the common man as foolish and erring but basically good. John Keats (1795-1821) was among the greatest of English poets. He died of tuberculosis at age 25. *See G. B. Risse, "Literature and Medicine," page 431.
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) was a German dramatist and physician who was concerned about freedom. He wrote The Robbers (1780) when he was only 21 years old, and it bespeaks his wild, rebellious spirit. The Wallerstein trilogy (1799) further develops the dilemma of freedom in an historic figure, Wallerstein. Sir William Osler (1849-1919) wrote, A liberal education may be had at a very slight cost of time and money.... Before going to sleep read for half an hour, and in the morning have a book open on your dressing table. You will be surprised how much can be accomplished in the course of a year.4
In 1906 Osler recommended ten books for a bedside library for medical students, and his Aequanimitas is one of my 1992 choices. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) fashioned Sherlock Holmes after his clinical teacher, Dr Bell, of Edinburgh Medical School. Holmesians abound in medicine. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) was a great Russian short story writer and dramatist. Dr Astrov in Uncle Vania presents a physician who only tolerated the present by believing that man could do far better. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) created in Philip of Of Human Bondage a physician who develops with loving humanity. A. J. Cronin (1896-1981) presented an ethical physician in Andrew Manson, who sought the truth as he saw it despite the medical establishment's repressive actions. William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a hard-working family physician and poet who raised Paterson, New Jersey, to an epic poem, "Paterson." T7he Doctor Stories reveal a clinician and writer who drew poetry and prose out of the lives of those patients whom he truly cared for. He is a model physician and humanist. Walker Percy (1916-1990), a pathologist turned writer, wrote about the South with insights borrowed from medicine. Will Barrett in The Second Coming develops new understanding of his society through disease. Lewis Thomas (1913-) has created essays, including the collection The Medusa and the Snail, in which he states, ". . . Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing."5Pl471 So does Dr Thomas, and it is delightful reading. REFERENCES 1. Branch WT, Arky RA, Woo B, Stoeckle JD, Levy DB, Taylor WC: Teaching medicine as a human experience: A patient-doctor relationship course for faculty and first-year medical students. Ann Intern Med 1991; 114:482-489 2. Radwany SM, Adelson BH: The use of literary classics in teaching ethics to physicians. JAMA 1987; 257:1629-1631 3. Williams WC: The Doctor Stories. New York, NY, New Directions, 1984 4. Osler W: Aequanimitas. New York, NY, McGraw-Hill, 1906 5. Thomas L: The Medusa and the Snail. New York, NY, Viking, 1979
(Gude JK: A humanistic library for physicians by physicians. West J Med 1992 Apr; 156:430) Dr Gude is Coordinator of Medicine of the Family Practice Residency Program, Community Hospital of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, California, and Professor of Medicine and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. Reprint requests to James K. Gude, MD, 3317 Chanate Rd, Ste 2C, Santa Rosa, CA 95404.
Commentary A Humanistic Library for Physicians by Physicians JAMES K. GUDE, MD, Santa Rosa, California Dr James Gude trained at Yale and Stanford and has been chair of the residency and library committees at the Community Hospital of Sonoma County for years. A former Fulbright scholar, he practices pulmonary and critical care medicine, teaches with passion and award-winning skill, savors the history of medicine, and lectures widely on subjects ranging from Greek, Roman, Arabic, and Chinese medicine to medical ethics and physical diagnosis. We present an annotated list ofsome ofhisfavorite physician-authors and their work. We hope it inspires you and e-xpands your horizons. Guenter Risse, MD, in his accompanying editorial, * wishes you "Bon Appetit! " We hope you will also send us a list ofyourfavorites; we will publish follow-ups from time to time. THE EDITORS
E very physician needs a humanistic library for support and discovery. There are two ways of defining humanism in medicine. The first is to define a humanistic physician as [O]ne who understands patients as people and considers their psychological and social features in his or her assessments and treatments, who is compassionate and ethically sensitive, and who communicates compassion and sensitivity warmly and effectively to patients. I
The second is to call forth the liberal arts traditions in medicine of philosophy, prose, and poetry centered on the human condition.2 William Carlos Williams (1883 to 1963) blended a compassionate caring for his patients with prose and poetry. He wrote, That is why as a writer I have never felt that medicine interfered with me but rather that it was my very food and drink, the very thing which made it possible for me to write. Was I not interested in man? I could touch it, smell it. It was myself, naked, just as it was, without a lie telling itself to me in its own terms.3tP120)
I share with you 13 books written by physicians in this liberal arts tradition of medicine. Humanistic Writings of Physicians FranVois Rabelais (1494-1553) was a monk and then a physician who wrote with exaggerated humor and biting satire about the conflict between Scholasticism and Humanism. His Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534) are works ahead of their time. John Locke (1632-1704) was a philosopher and physician who made bedside rounds with Thomas Sydenham, the English Hippocrates. Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1764) is a classic defense of the Western liberal constitutional state with the natural right of private property. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), a writer and physician, created a comedy in She Stoops to Conquer (1773) that presented the common man as foolish and erring but basically good. John Keats (1795-1821) was among the greatest of English poets. He died of tuberculosis at age 25. *See G. B. Risse, "Literature and Medicine," page 431.
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) was a German dramatist and physician who was concerned about freedom. He wrote The Robbers (1780) when he was only 21 years old, and it bespeaks his wild, rebellious spirit. The Wallerstein trilogy (1799) further develops the dilemma of freedom in an historic figure, Wallerstein. Sir William Osler (1849-1919) wrote, A liberal education may be had at a very slight cost of time and money.... Before going to sleep read for half an hour, and in the morning have a book open on your dressing table. You will be surprised how much can be accomplished in the course of a year.4
In 1906 Osler recommended ten books for a bedside library for medical students, and his Aequanimitas is one of my 1992 choices. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) fashioned Sherlock Holmes after his clinical teacher, Dr Bell, of Edinburgh Medical School. Holmesians abound in medicine. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) was a great Russian short story writer and dramatist. Dr Astrov in Uncle Vania presents a physician who only tolerated the present by believing that man could do far better. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) created in Philip of Of Human Bondage a physician who develops with loving humanity. A. J. Cronin (1896-1981) presented an ethical physician in Andrew Manson, who sought the truth as he saw it despite the medical establishment's repressive actions. William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a hard-working family physician and poet who raised Paterson, New Jersey, to an epic poem, "Paterson." T7he Doctor Stories reveal a clinician and writer who drew poetry and prose out of the lives of those patients whom he truly cared for. He is a model physician and humanist. Walker Percy (1916-1990), a pathologist turned writer, wrote about the South with insights borrowed from medicine. Will Barrett in The Second Coming develops new understanding of his society through disease. Lewis Thomas (1913-) has created essays, including the collection The Medusa and the Snail, in which he states, ". . . Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing."5Pl471 So does Dr Thomas, and it is delightful reading. REFERENCES 1. Branch WT, Arky RA, Woo B, Stoeckle JD, Levy DB, Taylor WC: Teaching medicine as a human experience: A patient-doctor relationship course for faculty and first-year medical students. Ann Intern Med 1991; 114:482-489 2. Radwany SM, Adelson BH: The use of literary classics in teaching ethics to physicians. JAMA 1987; 257:1629-1631 3. Williams WC: The Doctor Stories. New York, NY, New Directions, 1984 4. Osler W: Aequanimitas. New York, NY, McGraw-Hill, 1906 5. Thomas L: The Medusa and the Snail. New York, NY, Viking, 1979
(Gude JK: A humanistic library for physicians by physicians. West J Med 1992 Apr; 156:430) Dr Gude is Coordinator of Medicine of the Family Practice Residency Program, Community Hospital of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, California, and Professor of Medicine and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. Reprint requests to James K. Gude, MD, 3317 Chanate Rd, Ste 2C, Santa Rosa, CA 95404.
