On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 329 Richard Reynolds and John Stone, eds., with Lois LaCivita Nixon and Delese Wear, On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. 428 pp. Clothbound, $29.95. Occasionally during the quietude of a physician's work, it is necessary and restoring to turn to a book as to an old friend to refuel inspiration. The best friends re-energize in just a few moments—a few pages Uke Sir George Pickering's Creative Malady (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), about the lives and illnesses of Darwin, Nightingale , Eddy, Freud, Proust, and Browning. Now, in my study, there is a new companion, On Doctoring, a gem that evokes recognizable experience that elevates physicianhood to the privilege it is. On Doctoring is an anthology of nearly one hundred short pieces of literature that capture the universal experiences of illness, doctoring, and being doctored. In their introduction to this volume, the two physician-editors, Richard Reynolds and John Stone, write, William Carlos Williams has captured very well the human splendor of medicine. We have tried to do the same in compiling this anthology, which contains essays, short stories, excerpts, memoirs, and poems. In the process of caring for their patients, physicians have a unique— and privileged—window on the full range of human emotions. Literature , too, is rich in its descriptions of individual illnesses and universal plagues, in its capacity to reveal patients' reactions to illness and doctors' dilemmas in providing care. . . . [Literature defines the medical profession and fits it into the larger society. (P. 13) Although there are three biblical passages, John Donne's sixteenthcentury poem "Death be not proud," and several selections from the nineteenth century, most of the works are contemporary, at least onethird published in the past decade. Works by physician-authors make up nearly 50 percent of the anthology. There are classics by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sir William Osier, Anton Chekhov, W. Somerset Maugham, and William Carlos Williams, as well as works by some of the bestknown clinicians of the past forty years, such as Dana Atchley, Herrman Blumgart, Earle P. Scarlett, Paul B. Beeson, Philip A. Tumulty, Edward Lowbury, and Lewis Thomas. The selections revolve around three themes on doctoring: patients' experiences of illness; doctors themselves; and doctor-patient interactions. On patients' experiences. Birth is the topic of some poems and stories (for example, Ernest Hemingway's story "Indian Camp"), trauma in 330 BOOK REVIEWS Robert Frost's poem "Out, Out—," and grief in Linda Pastan's poem "The Five Stages of Grief." I doubt that there is a more poignant tale of unrequited grieving than Chekhov's "Misery." Grieving remains a doit -yourself process. By now, we should have developed a less awkward and more helpful response to the grief-stricken. Eight poems present vicarious experiences of glaucoma, obesity, tuberculosis, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, pain, and dying. Death, the main focus of the theme of patients' experiences, is the subject of twelve poems, Raymond Carver's "My Death" being especially meaningful, and four gripping short stories (Arna Bontemps's "A Summer Tragedy," Richard Selzer's "Mercy," Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," and Ethan Canin's "We Are Nighttime Travelers"). On doctors. The high calling and elevated status of physicians is captured from the past—in the Old Testament, Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach) 38:1-15—to the present—Carola Eisenberg's essay for medical students, "It Is Still a Privilege to Be a Doctor." Five essays and a poem center on the theme of becoming a physician. Paul B. Beeson's essay "On Becoming a Clinician" sets a framework for the entering medical student. Perri Klass, a recent medical student herself, engages the ritual of morning rounds with the resident in her essay "Invasions." John Stone's poem "Gaudeamus Igitur" and Sir William Osier's essay "Aequanimitas" are directed to students upon their graduation to physicianhood. Two essays deal from different perspectives with house-officer training: an excerpt from The Summing Up, by W. Somerset Maugham, and "The House Officer's Changing World," by Joseph Hardison. The technique and technology in the hands of physicians is the subject of a half-dozen humorous poems and essays. Among...