Tag: William Carlos Williams
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When the FBI investigated William Carlos Williams
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “And my ‘medicine’ was the thing that gained me entrance to…[the] secret garden of the self…I was permitted by my medical badge to follow the poor, defeated body onto those gulfs and grottos[sic].”1— William Carlos Williams, M.D. William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963), poet and physician, was born in Rutherford, New Jersey,…
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On suffering and its depiction in William Carlos Williams’s “The Yellow Flower”
Negin Rezaei Tehran, Iran Passport photograph of William Carlos Williams. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University. Circa 1920. Via Wikimedia 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…
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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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Remembering Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, physician philosopher
Dean Gianakos Lynchburg, Virginia, United States “Get Wisdom.” – Proverbs 4:5 Photograph of the author (right) and Dr. Pellegrino (left). Courtesy of the author. One day in the spring of 1985, I remember jogging past the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, wondering what went on in there. It was a gorgeous…
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When I heard the learn’d epidemiologist
Dean Gianakos Lynchburg, Virginia, United States Photo by prottoy hassan on Unsplash Sitting on the maroon recliner in my den, I am having trouble concentrating on the epidemiologist who is talking on the television. He points to a Covid hot zone on a color-coded map of the United States. The screen changes before I can locate Virginia.…
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Reading poems, saving lives
Dean Gianakos Virginia, United States Men and women who tout the value of poetry like to refer to a stanza in William Carlos Williams’ famous love poem, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”, written in 1947: It is difficult To get the news from poems Yet men die miserably every day For lack Of what is…
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The doctor as writer (William Carlos Williams)
“[Some people] naïvely ask him, ‘How do you do it? How can you carry on an active business like that and at the same time find time to write? You must be superhuman. You must have at the very least the energy of two men.’ But they do not grasp that one occupation complements the…
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Connecting literature with medicine
Rubina Naqvi Karachi, Pakistan Portrait of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, 1898 Osip Braz Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow There is a need for increasing the education of medical students through the use of literature, so that physicians can become knowledgeable about and eager to confront the social, economic, and cultural contributors to illness. This is particularly important…