Tag: Literary Essays
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Love as illness: Symptomatology
Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Is love a disease? I mean erotic, obsessive, knees-a-trembling, passionate love. This is a question on which philosophers have descanted interminably. So have anthropologists, physicians, poets, and, in short, all those who suffer what Juvenal called insanabile cacoethes scribendi1 (“the incurable mania of writing”). All these have set forth their…
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Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann and Der Struwwelpeter
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.”—B.F. Skinner Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann (1809-1894) was a general practitioner in Frankfurt. When an opening for a physician at the Frankfurt psychiatric hospital was announced, he took the job despite having no particular experience in the field. He apparently taught himself and increased…
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A “most perfect interchange”
Satyabha TripathiLucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India [Lydgate held] the conviction that the medical profession as it might be was the finest in the world; presenting the most perfect interchange between science and art; offering the most direct alliance between intellectual conquest and the social good […] he was an emotional creature, with a flesh-and-blood sense of…
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Rejuvenation: “The Adventure of the Creeping Man” from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States Ch’ io sono quell gran medicoDottore eanciclpedico,Chiamato Dulcamara,. . . Rigiovnir bramate? I’m noted as a scientist,Practitioner and specialist.I’m Doctor Dulcamara…Would you like your youth recaptured? L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love), music by Geatano Donizetti, Libretto by Felice Romano, Act I, scene IV1 “Rejuvenation” through medical science is the…
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On suffering and its depiction in William Carlos Williams’s “The Yellow Flower”
Negin RezaeiTehran, Iran Eric Cassell observed that physical pain and suffering are two distinct experiences and that pain is only one of the infinite number of sources that may cause suffering in human beings. Doctors, he believes, need to understand this distinction if they are to establish an effective connection with their patients. Successfully treating…
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The use of force in medicine
Angad TiwariIndiaMallika KhuranaJapan William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), regarded as “the most important literary doctor since Chekhov,” was an American Pulitzer prize-winning writer and poet who stands amongst the few full-time practicing physicians to have achieved literary distinction.1 He regarded art and medicine as “two parts of a whole,” and the intimate doctor-patient interface proved a…
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Essential tremor in a medieval scribe: Extracting hidden historical knowledge from the work of the Tremulous Hand
Andrew WodrichWashington DC, United States Introduction In the Middle Ages, before the ubiquity of the printing press, the act of writing and preserving the knowledge of Western Europe was promulgated primarily by monastic scribes.1 These scribes spent hours toiling away in dark rooms copying, translating, and authoring almost all of the written knowledge of their…
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Catching your death: Infectious rain in the works of Jane Austen
Eve ElliotDublin, Ireland Fans of the Netflix romp Bridgerton or any of the Jane Austen film adaptations will likely be familiar with the important social etiquette of inquiring after someone’s health. Unlike the modern throwaway how are you, people in the English Regency era1 had a genuine interest in the health of family and friends.…
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Did Ernest Hemingway have the Celtic curse?
Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Considering Ernest Hemingway’s mishaps before he died in 1961 by a self-inflicted shotgun wound, it is surprising that he lived so long. He survived two plane crashes several days apart that left him with a concussion, burns, cracked ribs and vertebrae, and ruptures of the liver, spleen, and kidneys.…