Title The last physician : Walker Percy and the moral life of medicine / edited by Carl Elliott and John Lantos

Published Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 1999

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Description 1 online resource (vii, 167 pages) Contents Dr. Percy's hold on medicine / Robert Coles -- The act of seeing with one's own eyes / Ross McElwee -- Why doctors make good protagonists / John Lantos -- From eye to ear in Percy fiction: changing the paradigm for clinical medicine / Martha Montello -- Prozac and the existential novel: two therapies / Carl Elliott -- Ethics in the ruins / David Schiedermayer -- Walker Percy and medicine: the struggle for recovery in medical education / Richard Martinez -- Now you are one of us: gender, reversal, and the good read / Laurie Zoloth -- Inherited depression, medicine, and illness in Walker Percy's art / Bertram Wyatt-Brown -- Pathology rounds with Dr. Percy: the modern malaise, its causes and cure / Brock Eide -- Walker Percy, reluctant physician / Jay Tolson -- Afterword: writing and rewriting stories / John Lantos Summary Walker Percy brought to his novels the perspective of both a doctor and a patient. Trained as a doctor at Columbia University, he contracted tuberculosis during his internship as a pathologist at Bellevue Hospital and spent the next three years recovering, primarily in TB sanitoriums. This collection of essays explores not only Percy's connections to medicine but also the underappreciated impact his art has had--and can have--on medicine itself.The contributors--physicians, philosophers, and literary critics--examine the relevance of Percy's work to current dilemmas in medical education and health policy. They reflect upon the role doctors and patients play in his novels, his family legacy of depression, how his medical background influenced his writing style, and his philosophy of psychiatry. They contemplate the private ways in which Percy's work affected their own lives and analyze the author's tendency to contrast the medical-scientific worldview with a more spiritual one. Assessing Percy's stature as an author and elucidating the many ways that reading and writing can combine with diagnosing and treating to offer an antidote to despair, they ask what it means to be a doctor, a writer, and a seeker of cures and truths--not just for the body but for the malaise and diseased spirituality of modern times.This collection will appeal to lovers of literature as well as medical professionals--indeed, anyone concerned with medical ethics and the human side of doctoring.Contributors. Robert Coles, Brock Eide, Carl Elliott, John D. Lantos, Ross McElwee, Richard Martinez, Martha Montello, David Schiedermayer, Jay Tolson, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Laurie Zoloth-Dorfman Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL English digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Print version record Subject Percy, Walker, 1916-1990 -- Criticism and interpretation Percy, Walker, 1916-1990 -- Knowledge -- Medicine Percy, Walker, 1916-1990 -- Ethics SUBJECT Percy, Walker, 1916-1990 -- Ethics Percy, Walker, 1916-1990 -- Knowledge -- Medicine Percy, Walker, 1916-1990 -- Criticism and interpretation Percy, Walker, 1916-1990 Percy, Walker, 1916-1990 fast Subject Literature and mental illness -- United States -- History -- 20th century Literature and medicine -- United States -- History -- 20th century Physicians' writings, American -- History and criticism Medicine in literature. Ethics in literature. Medical ethics. Authorship. Mental illness. Medicine in Literature Authorship Mental Disorders Ethics, Medical authorship. mental disorders. LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General Mental illness Authorship Ethics Ethics in literature Literature and medicine Literature and mental illness Medical ethics Medicine Medicine in literature Physicians' writings, American United States Genre/Form Personal narratives Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Personal narratives. Récits personnels. Form Electronic book Author Elliott, Carl, 1961- editor. Lantos, John D., editor. LC no. 99014158 ISBN 9780822398431 0822398435

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