The Last Physician

by Elliott, Carl; Lantos, John D.

• ISBN13: 9780822323365
• ISBN10: 0822323362
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Walker Percy brought to his novels the perspective of both a doctor and a patient. Trained as a doctor at Columbia University, he contracted tuberculosis during his internship as a pathologist at Bellevue Hospital and spent the next three years recovering, primarily in TB sanitoriums. This collection of essays explores not only Percy's connections to medicine but also the under-appreciated impact his art has had-and can have-on medicine itself. The contributors-physicians, philosophers, and literary critics-examine the relevance of Percy's work to current dilemmas in medical education and health policy. They reflect upon the role doctors and patients play in his novels, his family legacy of depression, how his medical background influenced his writing style, and his philosophy of psychiatry. They contemplate the private ways in which Percy's work affected their own lives and analyse the author's tendency to contrast the medical-scientific worldview with a more spiritual one. Assessing Percy's stature as an author and elucidating the many ways that reading and writing can combine with diagnosing and treating to offer an antidote to despair, they ask what it means to be a doctor, a writer, and a seeker of cures and truths-not just for the body but for the malaise and diseased spirituality of modern times. This collection will appeal to lovers of literature as well as medical professionals-indeed, anyone concerned with medical ethics and the human side of doctoring. Contributors. Robert Coles, Brock Eide, Carl Elliott, John D 2E Lantos, Ross McElwee, Richard Martinez, Martha Montello, David Schiedermayer, Jay Tolson, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Laurie Zoloth-Dorfman

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(8)
Carl Elliott
Dr. Percy's Hold on Medicine	9	(7)
Robert Coles
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes	16	(22)
Ross McElwee
Why Doctors Make Good Protagonists	38	(8)
John Lantos
From Eye to Ear in Percy's Fiction: Changing the Paradigm for Clinical Medicine	46	(13)
Martha Montello
Prozac and the Existential Novel: Two Therapies	59	(11)
Carl Elliott
Ethics in the Ruins	70	(11)
David Schiedermayer
Walker Percy and Medicine: The Struggle for Recovery in Medical Education	81	(15)
Richard Martinez
Now You Are One of Us: Gender, Reversal, and the Good Read	96	(16)
Laurie Zoloth
Inherited Depression, Medicine, and Illness in Walker Percy's Art	112	(22)
Bertram Wyatt-Brown
Pathology Rounds with Dr. Percy: The Modern Malaise, Its Causes and Cure	134	(16)
Brock Eide
Walker Percy, Reluctant Physician	150	(10)
Jay Tolson
Afterword: Writing and Rewriting Stories	160	(3)
John Lantos
Contributors	163	(2)
Index	165