Tag: Literary Essays
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Leo Tolstoy: Medical
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), one of literature’s greatest novelists, lived through an age of intense change in medicine. Nineteenth-century Russia was a country caught between ancient folk remedies and the rise of modern scientific practice, and Tolstoy himself straddled both worlds. His health was fragile, his writings repeatedly explored themes of illness, suffering, and death, and…
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Plato: Medical
Plato, the Athenian philosopher of the fourth century BCE, is remembered chiefly for his dialogues on ethics, politics, and metaphysics. Yet embedded within his philosophical works are numerous reflections on medicine and the human body. Living in a time when Greek medicine was undergoing a transition from superstition to rational observation, Plato drew on contemporary…
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Mencken: Medical
Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956), the caustic “Sage of Baltimore,” earned lasting fame as journalist, critic, and satirist. Best remembered for The American Language (1919 and its subsequent expansions), his multi-volume study of how Americans shaped English, Mencken also trained his sharp gaze on medicine, physicians, and the very words of health and disease. Though he…
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Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) occupies a unique and often controversial place in American literature. Best remembered for his unflinching realism, his exploration of ambition, desire, and social constraint, and his massive, detail-laden novels, Dreiser was both acclaimed and censured during his lifetime. His works, particularly Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), stand as landmark…
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W. Somerset Maugham: Medical
William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) is remembered primarily as a master of the short story and as a novelist whose lucid style made him one of the most widely read writers of the twentieth century. Yet beneath his literary reputation lies another identity: that of a trained physician. Medicine was not just a stage in Maugham’s…
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Victor Hugo: Medical
Victor Hugo (1802–1885), towering figure of French Romanticism, is remembered primarily for his vast literary achievements—Les Misérables, Notre-Dame de Paris, and countless poems that gave voice to the downtrodden and the exiled. Yet, woven into his life and works are subtle but significant medical threads. His experiences with illness, his compassion for the suffering poor,…
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Herman Melville: Medical
Herman Melville (1819–1891), best remembered for his monumental novel Moby-Dick, was a writer whose life and work were profoundly shaped by medical themes. Although he is often placed within the canon of American Romanticism, Melville’s writings reveal not only philosophical and theological concerns but also a deep engagement with the body, illness, and the medical…
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George Bernard Shaw: Medical
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), the Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, and Nobel Prize winner, was one of the great satirists of modern times. He left his mark not only on literature and theater but also on social and political thought. Among his many lifelong concerns, medicine and public health occupied a special place. Shaw was at…
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Rudyard Kipling: Medical
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), the British writer best known for The Jungle Book, Kim, and his haunting short stories, lived a life profoundly intertwined with medicine. Though not a physician, Kipling’s experiences of illness, grief, and global travel exposed him to medical realities that shaped both his personal life and his literary imagination. His encounters with…