Summary:

The purpose of this collection of essays written by teachers of literature and medicine is to serve as a guide for those who are preparing courses or seminars in the field. The collection is divided into four sections, each one approaching the theory and pedagogy of the discipline in a different way: one section is made up of model courses; a second views the subject matter from the standpoint of individual texts, authors, or genres; the third takes a broader look at some effects of literature on the practice of medicine and/or nursing and the role illness and medicine have played in the creation of literature; the fourth is a collection of resources available in the field. There is blurring of some of the boundaries of the sections, but read in the whole, the collection provides a good sense of the way medicine and literature is being taught in this country at this time.

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In this extensive review of her experiences in public health and rural and urban medicine, Eva Salber, MD, explores the commonalities and the differences in medical practice among three environments: pre-World War II South Africa, urban America, and the hills of North Carolina. Trained in South Africa, where she and her husband practiced for many years, Salber came to the US during a very difficult political period for whites in Cape Town.

In Boston, she pursued her passion for the plight of the poor and their health issues by studying further public health and running a ghetto clinic. Later, as a member of the Duke University faculty, she established rural health clinics in North Carolina. She describes, in this memoir, the contrasts among the cultures as well as her own difficulty in obtaining the funding and support she needed to carry out her work in each setting.

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In this short essay on the status of post-menopausal women, Le Guin examines the special status of older, experienced women who have lived through the trials and tribulations of the advent of sexuality, childbearing, and the end of the reproductive period. The author speaks to the special knowledge and wisdom acquired through these experiences and finally suggests that the most telling and viable representative of the human race on earth is the crone, who has known so much of what it means to be human. Le Guin would nominate such a crone for the space venture to the fourth planet of Altair in order to help the Altairians to "learn from an exemplary person the nature of the race."

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This collection about the experience of suffering and recovery from physical and emotional illness is unique in that each essay is composed by an established writer who uses his or her literary skills in the rendering of the narrative. The nature of the illnesses lived varies from chronic depression to a broken leg, from progressive and potentially fatal disease to the intermittent disability of connective tissue disorder.

Some of the stories are poetic in their use of metaphor and symbol, others are circumspect about the reality of the effect of illness, as well as healing, on the creative process. Together, they make an interesting cross-section of narrative responses to disruption of life plans.

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This work touches upon a wide range of issues, more or less closely related to the trauma surrounding, the management of, and the aftermath of sustaining a serious burn. Divided into three sections, the work first defines burns not only on a biological basis, but as distinguished psychologically and historically from other forms of physical trauma.

In Part II the authors explore ancient myths and then images from modern culture that they contend define social perceptions about the meaning of being a burn victim. The final section poses problems that remain in the technique of burn management in its most holistic sense. An extensive bibliography/filmography completes the book.

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The editor of this volume has pulled together a collection of essays directed toward the history of women as healers. The essays are divided into two groups--the first dealing with women healers in the medieval and renaissance periods of Europe, and the second addressing the emergence of professionalism, beginning with an essay on women physicians in ancient Greece, Rome and the Byzantine Empire and moving quickly to nineteenth-century Russia, Germany, England, Australia and America.

The subject matter of each essay reflects the period covered. Most use definitive examples of individual women healers who were either unusually effective or who reflect the struggles women had with the existing local social or medical hierarchy in gaining the opportunity to train for or practice their chosen profession.

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In this poignant poetic rendition of images presented to the narrator as she watches one of her body fluids ooze into an external receptacle, the reader is treated to a vivid array of symbols brought to the poet's imagination. The fluid is lymph, collected into a "little plastic pouch / hung on my side like a monkey." The poem is made up of run-on three line stanzas, flowing like the fluid--from color images, to visions of the sea, to associations with the aroma of fruit.

As the poem progresses, the narrator shifts from the reality of what it means to wear the collection device and empty and measure its contents, to the metaphors of fluid: the narrator is submerged, "I speak from inside / an aquarium," contemplates the metaphysics of the fluid milieu of the human body, "Who knows what's going on / beneath the skin. . ." And yet, the poet-narrator concludes, for their apparent significance, once the body fluids are spilled, the "gates opened," they become irrelevant as they dry into "sticky specks."

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The novel begins with the death and funeral of a mother, told from the viewpoint of a son. The reader meets other family members, including the father, a sister and a brother. This portion of the work drifts back and forth in time, putting together a history of the family and relationships among its members.

Abruptly, the viewpoint drifts to that of the mother, who tells her secret story--glimpses of her past, memories that come as a surprise in the face of the impressions gained from the opening narrative. Finally, the story returns to the last days of the mother's life, and the power of her love for her son, who once again assumes the role of narrator, as well as the loss of the inhibitions between the two.

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Through a series of letters, the lover, Werther, narrates his story of finding love and losing it. The continuity of the piece is interrupted by the third person narrator to explicate certain segments of the tale and to describe the unsuccessful suitor's suicide.

Young Werther, an artist with independent means, meets and falls in love with a woman already betrothed. The letters he writes detail the development of his relationship with Lotte and eventually with her intended, Albert. As the date of Lotte's wedding approaches, Werther leaves the area and attempts to forget her by immersing himself in the work world.

Unsuccessful, he returns to the estate where Lotte and her new husband reside. Becoming increasingly more obsessed with the need to possess Lotte, he alienates his former friends and is banished from their presence. Suicide ideation appears on multiple occasions, and in his final agony of loss, Werther borrows Albert's pistols and kills himself.

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This is one of three of Poe's tales that deal with mesmerism, an increasingly common practice of the early nineteenth century. This tale evolves around a young gentleman of Virginia, who has developed a rapport, a dependent relationship centered on mesmerism, with a physician who had been converted to the practices of Mesmer.

One day, after taking his usual morning dose of morphine, the gentleman leaves for his daily walk in the Ragged Mountains. He returns with the tale of a bizarre foreign encounter in which he dies from a snake bite to the temple.

As the "dead" man tells his tale, the doctor confirms that it was not a dream despite the fact that the subject seems quite alive. Within a few days the gentleman is dead, presumably because of the accidental application to his temple of a poisonous leech. The twist at the end of the tale, which includes allusion to reincarnation, will not be revealed here.

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