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Novel remedies
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Novel remedies The marriage of literature and medicine can be traced back to medicine’s origins in the Hippocratic Corpus. This library of medical works composed by ancient Greek physicians included medical histories, scientific reflections, and ethical meditations. The early physicians were also writers and bibliophiles. Their dual devotion seemed inevitable, for they were followers of Apollo who, in addition to being the god of the sun, was charged with overseeing both poetry and medicine. The importance of this union of medicine and the arts has remained visible in the works of physician writers. From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Anton Chekhov to William Carlos William and Oliver Sacks, literature and medicine share both a common past and a common vision: the imaginative exploration of the human condition. In the past several decades, the intersection of literature and medicine has become the focus of formal studies, leading to explorations of illness metaphors,1 illness narratives,2–4 new disciplines such as narrative medicine,5 and experiments on the correlation between reading literary fiction and empathy.6,7 Novels are even prescribed as a part of bibliotherapy.8 At the same time, literature has value beyond basic utility.9 It offers countless pleasures.
Reading transports us into other worlds and other minds. Literature comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable, fosters new insights about the self and the world, and startles us with its insight and beauty. Although the rewards of literary reading are unquantifiable, their value has long been recognised. Thomas Sydenham advised fellow physician and poet Richard Blackmore to read Don Quixote to become a better doctor, and in “For the Young Doctor About to Burn Out”, physician, medical educator, and writer Richard Gunderman noted that books “offer precisely the imaginative nourishment so often missing from contemporary medical education”.10 In literature courses taught in medical schools, narrative medicine workshops, and seminars for premedical students, we have seen minds transformed when literature gives students access to the vast range of perspectives in and about the world we share. Time spent reading and talking about literature can attune students to the nuances of language and illuminate the cultural and historical contexts of their own knowledge and work. Literature is a means of exploration that enriches both reflection and self-reflection. The Lancet’s new monthly column, From Literature to Medicine, will explore medically relevant themes through a literary lens, beginning with a focus on contemporary fiction, essays, and memoir. We invite you to join us as readers.
See Perspectives page 1230
*Daniel Marchalik, Ann Jurecic Department of Urology and Literature and Medicine Track, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20007, USA (DM); and Department of English, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA (AJ) [email protected] We declare no competing interests. 1 2 3 Private Collection/Peter Willi/Bridgeman Images
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Don Quixote (1955) by Pablo Picasso
www.thelancet.com Vol 386 September 26, 2015
Sontag S. Illness as metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978. Jurecic A. Illness as narrative. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012. Frank AW. The wounded storyteller: body, illness, and ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Kleinman A. The illness narratives: suffering, healing, and the human condition. New York: Basic Books, 1988. Charon R. Narrative medicine honoring the stories of illness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Kidd DC, Castano E. Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science 2013; 342: 377–80. Mar RA, Oatley K, Djikic M, Mullin J. Emotion and narrative fiction: interactive influences before, during, and after reading. Cogn Emot 2011; 25: 818–33. Dovey C. Can reading make you happier? The New Yorker June 9, 2015. Siegel L. Should literature be useful? The New Yorker Nov 6, 2013. Gunderman R. For the young doctor about to burn out. The Atlantic Feb 21, 2014.
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Novel remedies The marriage of literature and medicine can be traced back to medicine’s origins in the Hippocratic Corpus. This library of medical works composed by ancient Greek physicians included medical histories, scientific reflections, and ethical meditations. The early physicians were also writers and bibliophiles. Their dual devotion seemed inevitable, for they were followers of Apollo who, in addition to being the god of the sun, was charged with overseeing both poetry and medicine. The importance of this union of medicine and the arts has remained visible in the works of physician writers. From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Anton Chekhov to William Carlos William and Oliver Sacks, literature and medicine share both a common past and a common vision: the imaginative exploration of the human condition. In the past several decades, the intersection of literature and medicine has become the focus of formal studies, leading to explorations of illness metaphors,1 illness narratives,2–4 new disciplines such as narrative medicine,5 and experiments on the correlation between reading literary fiction and empathy.6,7 Novels are even prescribed as a part of bibliotherapy.8 At the same time, literature has value beyond basic utility.9 It offers countless pleasures.
Reading transports us into other worlds and other minds. Literature comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable, fosters new insights about the self and the world, and startles us with its insight and beauty. Although the rewards of literary reading are unquantifiable, their value has long been recognised. Thomas Sydenham advised fellow physician and poet Richard Blackmore to read Don Quixote to become a better doctor, and in “For the Young Doctor About to Burn Out”, physician, medical educator, and writer Richard Gunderman noted that books “offer precisely the imaginative nourishment so often missing from contemporary medical education”.10 In literature courses taught in medical schools, narrative medicine workshops, and seminars for premedical students, we have seen minds transformed when literature gives students access to the vast range of perspectives in and about the world we share. Time spent reading and talking about literature can attune students to the nuances of language and illuminate the cultural and historical contexts of their own knowledge and work. Literature is a means of exploration that enriches both reflection and self-reflection. The Lancet’s new monthly column, From Literature to Medicine, will explore medically relevant themes through a literary lens, beginning with a focus on contemporary fiction, essays, and memoir. We invite you to join us as readers.
See Perspectives page 1230
*Daniel Marchalik, Ann Jurecic Department of Urology and Literature and Medicine Track, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20007, USA (DM); and Department of English, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA (AJ) [email protected] We declare no competing interests. 1 2 3 Private Collection/Peter Willi/Bridgeman Images
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Don Quixote (1955) by Pablo Picasso
www.thelancet.com Vol 386 September 26, 2015
Sontag S. Illness as metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978. Jurecic A. Illness as narrative. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012. Frank AW. The wounded storyteller: body, illness, and ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Kleinman A. The illness narratives: suffering, healing, and the human condition. New York: Basic Books, 1988. Charon R. Narrative medicine honoring the stories of illness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Kidd DC, Castano E. Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science 2013; 342: 377–80. Mar RA, Oatley K, Djikic M, Mullin J. Emotion and narrative fiction: interactive influences before, during, and after reading. Cogn Emot 2011; 25: 818–33. Dovey C. Can reading make you happier? The New Yorker June 9, 2015. Siegel L. Should literature be useful? The New Yorker Nov 6, 2013. Gunderman R. For the young doctor about to burn out. The Atlantic Feb 21, 2014.
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