Summary:

The story begins with a philosophical discussion about how science (especially phrenology) understands human beings. It is the narrator's contention that science develops a priori. One first decides on the basic needs of humankind, then ascribes to certain organs the role of satisfying those needs. The narrator thinks this is backwards: "It would have been wiser, it would have been safer to classify . . . upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took for granted the Diety intended him to do."

One major trait scientists have overlooked is perversity. Men often do things for no better reason than that it will hurt themselves or others. The narrator then tells how he murdered a man and lived contentedly with the knowledge for many years until he was suddenly, perversely compelled to confess.

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In this long poem (47 quatrains), Annandale visits his doctor after years of absence and tells the doctor his story. When his wife Miriam died, he mourned her, "wept and said that all was done." Then he met Damaris, "who knows everything, / Knows how to find so much in me." Damaris, who became his second wife, comforts and accepts him. Even though sometimes "her complexities / Are restive" and she becomes angry, soon "She folds her paws and purrs again.

Annandale tells this story of late life happiness, then leaves the doctor's office. He never reaches home: "There was a sick crash in the street, / And after that there was no doubt, / Of what there was." In the last five quatrains, the doctor reflects on what he did for Annandale after the accident ("the one thing to do")--euthanasia.

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The story is told from the perspective of an obstetrician's wife. She encourages her husband as he finishes school and gets his first job. Then she becomes pregnant. She tells of the changes in her body and in her perspective. Her husband is busy treating other women, while she goes to childbirth classes alone. He arrives just at the end of the birth. She wants him to be with her more often, but understands his need to be with his patients.

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The male narrator works in an abortion clinic. On a daily basis he faces taunts from protesters and the bloody fragments of fetuses. His only consolations are his loving dog and a female lover. He says that he sticks with the job because he loves women and can't turn them down when they ask for his help. One day, he comes home from work to find that a protester has killed his dog. His lover comes and comforts him.

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Summary:

Old Doc Rivers is an old-time doctor who believes in prompt decisions and quick action. Although he is recognized as an alcoholic and drug abuser, the people in the community still hold him in high esteem and often turn to him for help when all else has failed. His story is told from the perspective of several people in his home town after his death.

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The doctor-narrator has been present at the birth of seven of Angelina's eight children. She is now in labor with the ninth. The mother is an Italian immigrant. The labor is prolonged, but without complications. The doctor spends much of the evening peacefully asleep in the kitchen.

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The doctor-narrator is working in a hospital during the Great Depression. The pediatric ward cares for many children left there by families unable to feed or care for them. The doctor sometimes thinks the children should just be allowed to die. One particular child captures his interest. She has a high fever and he cannot figure out why. Her condition becomes progressively worse and she dies. It turns out that she had meningitis. Perhaps he could have saved her if he had made the correct diagnosis. Yet, he doesn't feel guilty.

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A wonderful poem about an old, dying man recognizing he is dying before any one else in the family will admit it. He wants them to help him die--a kind of family consensus on euthanasia, which he seems to control. After much family discussion, they agree to help him by giving him enough pills to "put him to sleep." He jokes with his family as they assist his dying: "On the day it would happen, the old man would be funny again: wolfing down handfuls of pills, 'I know this'll upset my stomach,' he'd say."

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It is sometime in the future of genetic engineering, at the point at which, for a high enough price, one can buy physical and intellectual characteristics for one's fetus. This is the story of a young American couple of average means who have one "normal" son and are negotiating a supernorm status for their female fetus. The action centers around the stresses placed on the young family by the financial sacrifices required to engineer a daughter who would be able to compete in the growing population of engineered people. Husband and wife disagree increasingly, and ultimately the family breaks up over the wife's obsession with having a perfectly engineered child.

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Set in Padua "very long ago," this is the story of a "mad scientist" working in isolation on a completely unethical (at least by modern research standards) experiment involving poisonous plants. A young student of medicine observes from his quarters the scientist's beautiful daughter who is confined to the lush and locked gardens in which the experiment is taking place.

Having fallen in love with the lovely Beatrice, Giovanni ignores the warning of his mentor, Professor Baglioni, that Rappaccini is up to no good and he and his work should be shunned. Eventually, Giovanni sneaks into the forbidden garden to meet his lover, and begins to suffer the consequences of encounter with the plants--and with Beatrice, who dwells among them and has been rendered both immune to their effects and poisonous to others.

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