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Phil Whitaker
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Physician writers
Phil Whitaker y first piece of fiction arose from a case I undertook as a student. The patient had incurable cancer; I clerked him on the ward and visited him after discharge. The aim was to explore the impact of his illness on the family, to see disease in its social context. I was made welcome by his relatives who gamely answered my questions. Driving home I wrestled with guilt. The experience represented excellent material for my assignment. I would soon move on to my next clinical attachment and then the next, meeting an endless succession of patients; each would contribute briefly to my education then I would disappear. A picture formed: two lines describing different trajectories, intersecting at a single point before heading on to their respective destinies. There was something ineffably sad in that eye-blink of contact, preceded by convergence yet followed only by inexorable parting. Unbidden, images appeared—a cancer patient as she processed through her diagnostic journey, the glancing encounters with blank-faced students clustered behind the doctors she consulted along the way. Snatches of sound bubbled up, exchanges I had heard in clinics and on wards. I never made a conscious decision to sit down and write, but the story I crafted over the following evenings seemed the only possible response to the cacophony in my head. After the piece was published, contemporaries told me it had articulated their own feelings about an education that depended on the misfortune of others. From then on, I wanted to be a writer. I have moved away from medical settings. I seek out
M
Phil Whitaker is a general practitioner and forensic medical examiner; he reviews for the New Statesman and The Guardian. He has published three novels. Eclipse of the Sun won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. Triangulation was joint winner of the Encore Award for best second novel. The Face was published in 2002 by Atlantic Books and the paperback is published in the UK this month. c/o The Lancet, London, UK
1918
other worlds, inhabiting in my imagination corners of human existence that would otherwise be unknown to me. Nevertheless, my life as a doctor often informs my themes. While an unpublished hopeful, I chanced on an article about a solar eclipse in India, a place where different factions espouse scientific and mystical worldviews. The eclipse was seen as a proselytising opportunity on either side:
the base corruption of innocence. Cases over, I would return home to my family. Changing a nappy, throwing my delighted daughter above my head, wrestling with frustration during yet another sleepless night—images from victims’ stories would repeatedly intrude. Somewhere a spark ignited, and The Face came to life. Fiction sustains a part of me that would suffocate in
My favourite literature for The Lancet’s Desert Island ■ The Siege of Krishnapur, J G Farrell ■ In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien ■ The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro ■ The Houdini Girl, Martyn Bedford ■ Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges ■ J G Farrell: The Making of a Writer, Lavinia Greacen ■ Afterglow of Creation, Marcus Chown ■ somewhere i have never travelled, E E Cummings ■ A Red Red Rose, Robert Burns ■ Natural course of 500 consecutive cases of whooping cough: a general practice population study, Jenkinson D. BMJ 1995; 310: 299–302.
astronomy versus astrology, physics versus the gods. As a general practitioner I spend my time arbitrating between rational medicine and gloriously obdurate human nature, and I instinctively understood the opposing passions. My first novel, Eclipse of the Sun, was conceived. While working on Eclipse I heard an interview with one of the last practising forensic artists in the UK, a profession rendered obsolete by computer imaging. There was something about his skill at conjuring faces from the memories of victims that stayed with me. I tried to use it, but the novel I tentatively entitled The Face never materialised. A few years later, I started in forensic medicine. My work involved crimes against children: examining victims and offenders, I was confronted by
medicine, a side that celebrates the subjective and thinks in image and metaphor. But am I a writer despite or because of being a doctor? When I started to write I was, as far as I knew, the first to do so in our family. Once relatives learned what I was doing the stories came out. An aunt had written for radio in her youth. My grandfather penned stories based on his experiences map-making overseas. His father had published two novels. I work at the Victorian roll-top desk passed down the generations. I need no persuading that something in the genes is involved in the impulse to write. Medicine, with its ring-side seat on human experience, contributes, but had I chosen a different career I would be as in thrall to fiction as I am today.
THE LANCET • Vol 361 • May 31, 2003 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
Physician writers
Phil Whitaker y first piece of fiction arose from a case I undertook as a student. The patient had incurable cancer; I clerked him on the ward and visited him after discharge. The aim was to explore the impact of his illness on the family, to see disease in its social context. I was made welcome by his relatives who gamely answered my questions. Driving home I wrestled with guilt. The experience represented excellent material for my assignment. I would soon move on to my next clinical attachment and then the next, meeting an endless succession of patients; each would contribute briefly to my education then I would disappear. A picture formed: two lines describing different trajectories, intersecting at a single point before heading on to their respective destinies. There was something ineffably sad in that eye-blink of contact, preceded by convergence yet followed only by inexorable parting. Unbidden, images appeared—a cancer patient as she processed through her diagnostic journey, the glancing encounters with blank-faced students clustered behind the doctors she consulted along the way. Snatches of sound bubbled up, exchanges I had heard in clinics and on wards. I never made a conscious decision to sit down and write, but the story I crafted over the following evenings seemed the only possible response to the cacophony in my head. After the piece was published, contemporaries told me it had articulated their own feelings about an education that depended on the misfortune of others. From then on, I wanted to be a writer. I have moved away from medical settings. I seek out
M
Phil Whitaker is a general practitioner and forensic medical examiner; he reviews for the New Statesman and The Guardian. He has published three novels. Eclipse of the Sun won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. Triangulation was joint winner of the Encore Award for best second novel. The Face was published in 2002 by Atlantic Books and the paperback is published in the UK this month. c/o The Lancet, London, UK
1918
other worlds, inhabiting in my imagination corners of human existence that would otherwise be unknown to me. Nevertheless, my life as a doctor often informs my themes. While an unpublished hopeful, I chanced on an article about a solar eclipse in India, a place where different factions espouse scientific and mystical worldviews. The eclipse was seen as a proselytising opportunity on either side:
the base corruption of innocence. Cases over, I would return home to my family. Changing a nappy, throwing my delighted daughter above my head, wrestling with frustration during yet another sleepless night—images from victims’ stories would repeatedly intrude. Somewhere a spark ignited, and The Face came to life. Fiction sustains a part of me that would suffocate in
My favourite literature for The Lancet’s Desert Island ■ The Siege of Krishnapur, J G Farrell ■ In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien ■ The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro ■ The Houdini Girl, Martyn Bedford ■ Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges ■ J G Farrell: The Making of a Writer, Lavinia Greacen ■ Afterglow of Creation, Marcus Chown ■ somewhere i have never travelled, E E Cummings ■ A Red Red Rose, Robert Burns ■ Natural course of 500 consecutive cases of whooping cough: a general practice population study, Jenkinson D. BMJ 1995; 310: 299–302.
astronomy versus astrology, physics versus the gods. As a general practitioner I spend my time arbitrating between rational medicine and gloriously obdurate human nature, and I instinctively understood the opposing passions. My first novel, Eclipse of the Sun, was conceived. While working on Eclipse I heard an interview with one of the last practising forensic artists in the UK, a profession rendered obsolete by computer imaging. There was something about his skill at conjuring faces from the memories of victims that stayed with me. I tried to use it, but the novel I tentatively entitled The Face never materialised. A few years later, I started in forensic medicine. My work involved crimes against children: examining victims and offenders, I was confronted by
medicine, a side that celebrates the subjective and thinks in image and metaphor. But am I a writer despite or because of being a doctor? When I started to write I was, as far as I knew, the first to do so in our family. Once relatives learned what I was doing the stories came out. An aunt had written for radio in her youth. My grandfather penned stories based on his experiences map-making overseas. His father had published two novels. I work at the Victorian roll-top desk passed down the generations. I need no persuading that something in the genes is involved in the impulse to write. Medicine, with its ring-side seat on human experience, contributes, but had I chosen a different career I would be as in thrall to fiction as I am today.
THE LANCET • Vol 361 • May 31, 2003 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.