Summary:

This scholarly study examines "what it meant to ’talk of diseases’ in the second half of the nineteenth century" (2) and how discourses of health and illness were a vehicle for exploring individual and social identities, including gendered, racialized, and national identities. Narratives of physical illness are not simply artifacts of Victorian medical culture, Vrettos argues, but offer examples of the pervasive "master narratives" that shaped Victorian middle-class culture.

Individual chapters focus on the ill female body as an expressive text with variable legibility (and on nurses as privileged readers of ill bodies); "nervous illness" and the role of narrative in reconstructing the self; "neuromimesis" or neurotic imitation of disease; and the "politics of fitness and its relation to imperialist ideology." Vrettos discusses fictional works by Louisa May Alcott, (Hospital Sketches; see this database) Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot (Middlemarch; see this database), H. Rider Haggard, Henry James, Bram Stoker, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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The protagonist, Anderson, has a skin cancer growing dangerously close to one of his tear ducts. An aging "idler and playboy," he has spent too many years in the sun (67). Anderson consults and promptly becomes infatuated with his facial plastic surgeon, Dr. Kim, "who turned out to be a woman, a surprisingly young Korean-American who even in her baggy lab coat evinced considerable loveliness" (67). Anderson is fascinated with Dr. Kim's body, her visible pregnancy, her way of moving and speaking, and her face. He enjoys the "bliss of secure helplessness" of the surgery itself, performed by Dr. Kim and two female nurses who "rotate[]" around him conversing as they work (67).

While successful, the surgery leaves a small bump on his face that Anderson asks Dr. Kim to correct surgically. The second surgery achieved, Anderson returns a third time for the much more ambitious project of tucking his somewhat saggy eyelids. His goal, however, is not just to tighten slack skin but to make his lids look like Dr. Kim's, "with an epicanthus" (69). The six-hour surgery is both successful and satisfying to Anderson--until he sees a photo of Dr. Kim's husband.

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Cortney Davis follows her 30 year career in nursing, from her experience as a student nurse washing a patient's feet, to dealing as a nurse practitioner with life and death issues in an inner city OB/GYN clinic. Her essays present epiphanies where she realizes what is important in a confusing and ambiguous situation, why she writes poetry even though she is exhausted from her daily work in the clinic, why she is a nurse when the job  sometimes seems overpowering and depressing.  The positive connections with patients--through kindness, caring, truth-telling, touch-outweigh the difficulties.  Tedious routines are often transformed by spiritual insights and empathy. And sometimes what seems like a miracle inserts itself in a time of grief. Whether she is talking to a man in a coma or treating a sexually-abused teenager, her focus is on the care of the patient.

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Before Jamie Weisman went to medical school and became a physician she wanted to be a writer. As she struggled to make a career out of writing, she was forced to acknowledge that the obscure, life-threatening condition that had plagued her since adolescence could not be factored out of her plans. Writers don't have easy access to affordable health insurance and her monthly intravenous infusions of antibodies and interferon were very expensive. Yet they were essential to fend off infection, for she had an immune system malfunction.

Of course, finances were not the only reason that Weisman decided to go into medicine. As is often the case, her own experience of illness was an important motivating factor, as was the fact that her father, of whom she is very fond, was a physician. This memoir describes significant stages of Weisman's illness, her interaction with the physicians she consulted, and the issues she grapples with as she pursues her life as a physician, wife, and mother (she graduated from Emory University's school of medicine in 1998 and practices dermatology).

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Spoiler alert: for educational purposes, this annotation reveals plot lines and may interfere with some viewers' enjoyment of the film. In the opening scene, Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas), looking ashen, drawn, and nervous, sits in an airport as her much younger and radiant sister Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) rushes to meet her.  Léa brings an eager, if somewhat forced cheer to their halting conversations during this meeting and in their car ride to the home Léa shares with her husband, their two small adopted Vietnamese daughters, and her mute father-in-law.  From this awkward beginning, the sisters try to cross the chasm of a fifteen-year separation.  The cause and nature of the separation gradually unfold in small, slowly paced scenes of ordinary life at home, at work, in a café, during dinners with friends.  These scenes form the visible surface under which secrets and plangent, unacknowledged emotions lie, sometimes erupting into view, sometimes gently suggested.
    
The cause of the separation is the prison term Juliette has served in England.  We eventually learn that the sentence has to do with the death of her child, with her being a physician, with her child's suffering from cancer, and with the application of her medical knowledge to end his pain.  Following the court sentence, Juliette's parents refuse to acknowledge her, her husband divorces her, her sister buries memories of their childhood and chooses not to give birth, family and friends never visit her in prison.  We also learn that Juliette remained inexplicably silent throughout her trial.  She continues to say very little as she settles in with Lea's family and circle of friends, who are baffled by her sudden appearance in Lea's life.  But as Juliette's participation in her sister's circle increases in fitful starts, she becomes cautiously more communicative and brighter.

During a confrontation with Léa at the end of the film, Juliette reveals that, more than avoiding a shameful appraisal from others, she remains silent because there are no words to express her pain.  Being in prison made literal the isolating psychological state she inhabited.  "The worst prison is the death of one's child," she says.  "You never get out of it."  With these words, the film places the wound and the pain at the core of its main character in the inescapable vulnerability of motherhood.    

    

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This anthology culls 1,500 excerpts from approximately 600 works of literature primarily written in the past two centuries and representing all major genres--the novel, drama, poetry, and essay. These brief selections highlight how literature portrays the medical profession and also provide ample evidence of many recurrent themes about the doctor-patient relationship and the personal lives of physicians present in the pages of fiction.

The book is organized into eleven chapters devoted to the following subjects: the doctor's fee, time, bedside manner, the medical history and physical examination, communication and truth, treatment, detachment, resentment of the medical profession, hospital rounds, social status, and the doctor in court. Many well-known authors including Anton P. Chekhov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, W. (William) Somerset Maugham, Leo Tolstoy, Tennessee Williams, and William Carlos Williams are featured in this anthology but less notable writers are also introduced. A twenty-three-page bibliography of primary and secondary sources is a useful element of the book.

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A son’s story of his father’s illness, treatment, and resultant destruction by the "psychic-driving" experiments of Dr. Ewen Cameron at Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute in the 1950’s. The effect of the father’s illness on the family is recounted, as is the son’s gradual realization, only when he is himself about to become a psychiatrist, that something abnormal must have taken place during those long hospitalizations. Weinstein tells other patient stories in some detail as he recounts the legal fight for compensation awarded finally in October, 1988.

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Suzanne Poirier has studied over 40 book-length memoirs describing medical training in the United States. These texts vary in format from published books to internet blogs, in time (ranging from 1965 to 2005), and in immediacy, some reporting during medical school or residency while others were written later--sometimes many years later.

A literary scholar and cultural critic, Poirier analyzes these texts thematically and stylistically, finding pervasive and regrettable (even tragic) weaknesses in medical education. Her three major points are these: such training (1) ignores the embodiment of future doctors, (2) is insensitive to the power relationships that oppress them, and (3) makes it difficult to create a nurturing relationship--especially by tacitly promoting the image of the lone, heroic physician.

While some of these repressive features have improved in the last decade or so--in contrast to the momentous scientific progress--there is a general failure to deal with the emotional needs of persons in training as they confront difficult patients, brutal work schedules, and mortality, both in others and in themselves.

In her conclusion, Poirier describes some contemporary efforts to help medical students write about their feelings, but she also sees the negative consequences of "an educational environrment that is inherently hostile to such exercises" (169).  Her challenge is this: " "Emotional honesty is a project for all health professionals, administrators, and professional leaders" (170).

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Ethiopia, 1954. Twin boys conjoined at the head survive a surgical separation and a gruesome C-section delivery. Their mother, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, does not. The Carmelite nun, a native of India, dies in the same place where she worked as a nurse - the operating room of a small hospital in Addis Ababa. The facility is dubbed Missing Hospital, and it is staffed by some remarkable people.

Thomas Stone is a British general surgeon. The only thing that he loves more than medicine is Sister Praise. When she dies during childbirth, he has a meltdown - abruptly fleeing the hospital and leaving Africa. Although Thomas Stone is the father of the twins, he blames the babies for the nun's death. Decades later, he is working at a prestigious medical center in Boston where he specializes in hepatic surgery and research on liver transplantation. The twins are raised by two physicians at Missing Hospital - Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Hemlatha (Hema) - who get married. Hema is an obstetrician-gynecologist. Ghosh is an internist who becomes the hospital's surgeon by necessity after Thomas Stone departs.

The fate of the twin boys, Marion Stone and Shiva Stone, is sculpted by their experiences at Missing Hospital and the growing pains of Ethiopia. The African nation is full of possibilities and mayhem. Both boys are highly intelligent and unusually bonded. Shiva is eccentric and empathic. Although he never attends medical school, Ghosh and Hema train him. Shiva becomes a world authority on treating vaginal fistulas. Marion narrates the story. He is repeatedly hurt by love. The girl of his dreams, Genet, opts to have her first sexual encounter with Shiva. Genet plays a role in hijacking an airplane and rebels against the Ethiopian government. Although innocent, Marion comes under suspicion because of her actions. He escapes the country for his own safety.

Like his father, Marion lands in America. He completes his residency training as a trauma surgeon in New York. He locates his biological father but reconciliation is difficult for both men. Genet has also come to America. She shows up at Marion's apartment, and they have sexual intercourse. Genet exposes him to tuberculosis and Hepatitis B. Marion delevelops liver failure due to hepatitis. He is going to die. Shiva and Hema travel to New York to be with Marion. Shiva proposes an experimental treatment for his brother - a living donor liver transplantation. After all, there is no better organ donor than an identical twin. Thomas Stone performs the operation along with one of Marion's coleagues. The surgery is successful. Then Shiva has bleeding in his brain and dies. Marion returns to Ethiopia and Missing Hospital. Half a century removed from his birth, Marion is back at home and still conected to his twin brother. The lobe of liver donated by Shiva is functioning perfectly.

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This survey of the history of women in medicine begins in the mid 19^th century and moves forward to the late 20^th Century.  The twelve historical studies are divided by the editors into three sections, largely chronological.  The first section focuses on the 19^th century women best known for their breakthrough into the male bastion of regular medicine in America.  There is, in addition to the more traditional studies, a look at the role of a Chinese woman physician in Progressive Era Chicago.  Section two takes the reader into the early 20^th century Womens' Health Movement, including a fresh look at the narrative forms of Our Bodies, Ourselves.  Section three examines the mid-late 20^th century position of women in American medicine and an interesting discourse on the impact of Western women physicians on issues of childbearing in Asia during the early part of the same century.

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