Medicine and Literature, Volume Two : The Doctor's Companion to the Classics

Aiming to give doctors a fresh perspective on the doctor-patient relationship, this book describes classic novels, short stories, plays and poems in detail. Volume one (1-85775-535-9) was published in 2002. Contributors include Alistair Stead, Gillie Bolton and Brian Glasser.

‘When I want to know the real rock-bottom truth about what happens all the time in this doctoring life, what happens to us, and to the folks who bring us their hearts and worries to be heard, that’s when I turn, every time, to the novelists, the playwrights, the poets, the essayists, who have given us the sights and sounds, the feel, of all that goes on, minute by minute. What Tolstoy and Chekhov knew, we need to know for ourselves, for our own sakes, as we live out our medical lives.’ William Carlos Williams ‘The most fundamental of all consulting skills is genuine curiosity about other people, the constant urge to wonder ‘Why are they as they are?’ We should open our minds to the life of the imagination not just for its entertainment value, but for the mindset of curiosity it engenders in us. Such books as John Salinsky describes in this and his previous volume combine powerful opportunities for our own professional growth with pleasure and recreation too.’ Roger Neighbour in his Foreword ‘This carefully assembled, wonderfully telling book is a “companion,” for sure, a lasting and most helpful one, for the medical travelling that awaits us.’ Robert Coles in his Foreword.