Literary works, book reviews, and literature related to medicine and healthcare
Narrative medicine transforms clinical practice through close reading and reflective writing. A comprehensive guide for physicians and researchers, from Rita Charon’s Columbia programme to Oliver Sacks, Tolstoy, and Jerome Groopman.
I went back to the Odyssey when Nolan’s film came out, for reasons that had nothing to do with medicine. I did not get far. Book I stopped me. Odysseus, we are told almost in passing, once sailed to Ephyra to find a man named Ilus, son of Mermerus, and to ask him for a … Read more
SummaryDante Alighieri’s Inferno is a theological poem, yes, but it is also, almost incidentally, a forensic catalogue of medieval disease and healthcare. This article reads the poem through the lens of medical history: how Dante represents specific pathologies (dropsy, scabies and possibly leprosy, neurological deformity, hypothermia, traumatic mutism), how he mimics diagnostic observation, and how … Read more
I am a cardiac surgeon. My work is rooted in the operating room, in clinical decisions, and in the care of individual patients. At the same time, I have become deeply interested in medical data, statistics, coding, and artificial intelligence. My fascination with the history of medicine, however, has remained just as strong. At first … Read more
Doctor Zhivago turns the daily work of a physician into a lens for what care becomes when institutions break. War medicine, infectious disease, rural scarcity. Through these threads Pasternak delivers a lesson that still cuts close to contemporary, technology-driven healthcare: clinical judgment and ethical independence carry the most weight precisely when the system around them … Read more
Bergson’s Time in Acute Medicine: Why the Patient Is a Trajectory, Not a Timestamp There’s a quiet contradiction at the heart of acute medicine. We obsess over time. We count minutes. We chart vitals every few seconds. We schedule labs at fixed intervals, because if something is dangerous, surely it must be tracked. And still, … Read more
Introduction Haruki Murakami is one of the most significant contemporary Japanese novelists. While he never directly addresses medicine in his works, health-related themes frequently appear as metaphors. In his writing, the body and its lived experiences are consistently connected to trauma, memory, and the unconscious. These connections extend into fantastic, paranormal, and cosmological dimensions, transforming … Read more
The Death of the Grandmother: A Moment of Truth, Fragility, and Revelation Introduction In the third volume of “À la recherche du temps perdu”, Marcel Proust portrays the gradual illness and death of the narrator’s grandmother. This episode stands as one of the emotional, philosophical, and narrative pinnacles of the entire work. Through his meticulous … Read more
The Author Albert Camus (1913–1960) was a French writer-philosopher and a key figure in existentialism. Born in Mondovi, Algeria, Camus began his philosophy studies in Algiers. He later moved to Paris where, during World War II, he actively participated in the resistance against Nazi occupation. His most renowned novel is “The Stranger.” In 1957, Camus … Read more
I alone remember. And if I don’t tell you, children, everything that was and everything we knew, all will be lost. Jack London (1867–1916) was a prolific American writer. He’s best known for adventure novels like “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang,” but his vast work also addressed social issues. “The Scarlet Plague,” … Read more