Literature and Medicine

– excerpted from Words to the Wise Pre-Health Professional Student, HPAP
(Syracuse Univ: http://hpap.syr.edu/book.htm)

READ–READ–READ! It does not matter what you read so long as you continue to hone your reading (and comprehension) skills. As your reading improves, you will find it easier to cope with your college coursework. Success on the DAT, MCAT, OAT and other admissions tests depends upon good reading skills. In most professional school studies, you will be expected to read and comprehend as much as, if not more than, you do now as an undergraduate. Also, you will be so busy, you'll not have the time to re-read material.

After graduation from professional school, you may not need to read as many textbooks as before, but you will need to keep current on many aspects of medicine, drugs, and governmental regulations as well as those of insurance or health care maintenance organizations. If you hope to become a health professional who has a life outside of your practice, you should practice, now, reading with the intent to improve.

TRAINING

• Kenneth Ludmerer, Time to Heal
• K.M.Takakuwa, Nick Rubashkin, Karen E. Herzig, What I Learned in Medical School: Personal Stories of Young Doctors (Students' struggles with their education)
• Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt, The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream (Riverhead Books, 2002)
• Sherwin B. Nuland, The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Explores Myth, Medicine, and the Human Body, 2001
• Jerri Nielsen, MD, Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole
• Rosemary Jones, Educational and Career Opportunities in Alternative Medicine (Pima Publishing, 1998)
• Dianne Boulerice Lyons, Planning Your Career In Alternative Medicine: A Guide to Degree and Certificate Programs in Alternative Healthcare
• Ellen Lerner Rothman, White Coat: Becoming a Doctor at Harvard Medical, 1999
• Perri Klass, A Not Entirely Benign Procedure, 1988
• Perri Klass, Baby Doctor, 1993
• Joan Cassell, The Woman in the Surgeon's Body, 1998
• Charles LeBaron, Gentle Vengeance
• David Ewing Duncan, Residents: The Perils and Promise of Educating Young Doctors
• Ruth B. Purtilo & Amy Haddad, Health Professional and Patient Interaction, 5th Edition
• Edited by Mike Magee, M.D.,The 50 Most Positive Doctors in America, An illustrated, coffee table size book published by Spencer Books, Ltd., Canada
• Charles Lebaron, Gentle Vengenance
• Melvin Konner, M.D., Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medical School
• Geri-Ann Galanti, Caring for Patients from Different Cultures: Case Studies from American Hospitals
• Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought
• Marie L. Lassey, William R. Lassey, and Martin Jinks, Health Care Systems Around the World: Characteristics, Issues, Reforms
• Howard S. Becker et al. Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School, 1991
• Robert Marion, Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor, 1991
• Robert Marion, The Intern Blues
• Edited by David S. Svahn, MD from writings collected by Alan Kozak, MD, Let Me Listen To Your Heart (a compilation of remarkably moving writings by third year medical students)
• Laurence A. Savett, The Human Side of Medicine: Learning What It's Like to be a Patient and What It's Like to be a Physician (ISBN 0-86569-319-6)
• Edward Humes, Baby ER, The Heroic Doctors and Nurses Who Perform Medicine's Tiniest Miracles (Humes is a winner of the Pulitizer Prize)
• Ken Iserson, M.D., Demon Doctors: Physicians as Serial Killers
• 300 Ways to Put Your Talent to Work in the Health Field. An extensive guide to health careers, this resource includes career descriptions, plus information on work setting, education, and salary for more than 300 careers. It also lists contact information for more than 150 organizations offering additional information. (June 2002). To order visit National Health Council

POETRY

• An Anthology penned by 30 Different Practioners, On Wings of Spirit, 2002
• Rafael Campo, Landscape with Human Figure, 2002
• Rafael Campo, The Desire to Heal: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Poetry, 1998

PRACTICE

• Fitzhugh Mullan, Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care. 2002 A collection of 15 oral histories from primary care practitioners (12 physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistant and NP-PA) across the country
• Ben Carson, Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story. 1990
• Bruce Dan, A Piece of My Mind: A Collection of Essays from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), 1988
• Edited by Charlene Breedlove, Uncharted Lines: Poems from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
• David Hilfiker, Healing the Wounds: A Physician Looks at his Work, 1988
• Richard Selzer, Letters to a Young Doctor, 1982
• Howard Spiro et al. (eds.): Empathy and the Practice of Medicine, Beyond the Pill and Scapel, 1993
• John Stone, In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine, 1992
• William Carlos Williams, The Doctor Stories, 1984
• John McPhee, Heirs of General Practice, 1988
• Philip Zazove, When the Phone Rings, My Bed Shakes: Memoirs of a Deaf Doctor, 1993
• Edited by Richard Reynolds, M.D. & John Stone, M.D. On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays
• Sherwin B. Nuland, The Biography of Medicine
• Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die
• Sherwin B. Nuland, Doctors
• Sherwin B. Nuland, A Journey with My Father
• Leonard Laster, M.D. Life After Medical School, Thirty-two Doctors Describe How They Shaped Their Medical Careers
• Dominique Lapierre, Beyond Love
• Patch Adams with Maureen Mylander, Gesundheit (out of print check your libraries)
• Patch Adams and Pamela Jacobs, Housecalls How We Can All Heal The World One Visit at a Time
• Melba Colgrove, Harold Bloomfield, & Peter McWilliams, How to Survive the Loss of a Love
• Mehmet Oz, et al, Healing from the Heart, The Power of Complementary Medicine, 1998
• John Stone, In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine, 1992
• Lane Gerber, Married to their Careers: Career and Family Dilemmas in Doctors' Lives, 1983
• David Hartman & B. Asbell, White Coat, White Cane: The Extraordinary Odyssey of a Blind Physician, 1978
• Janet Bickel, Women in Medicine: Getting in, Growing, and Advancing
• Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, 2002

PATIENTS

• Alan Lightman, The Diagnosis, 2000
• Arthur Frank, At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness, 1992
• Susanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted, 1993
• Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals, 1980
• Gilda Radner, It's Always Something, 1990
• Jody Heymann, Equal Partners, 1995
• Edward Rosenbaum, A Taste of My Own Medicine (When the Doctor is the Patient), 1988
• Edward Rosenbaum, Doctor, 1991
• Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, 1984
• William Stryon, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, 1990
• Anatole Broyard, Intoxicated by My Illness
• Edited by Jon Mukan, Articulations
• Edited by Michael A. Lacombe, On Being a Doctor (poems and essays)
• Edited by Angela Belli and Jack Coulehan, Blood and Bone
• Harold Bursztajn, Medical Choices, Medical Chances. How Patients, Families and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty (out of print check your libraries)
• Abraham Verghese, My Own Country
• Hilfiker David, Not all of us are Saints, Hill and Wang 1994
• George Eliot, Middlemarch
• Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
• Arthur Kleinman, The Illness Narratives
• Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom
• Robert McCrum, My Year Off, Recovering Life After a Stroke, 1998
• Robert Buckman, Not Dead Yet, 1999
• Robert Buckman,I Don't Know What to Say, 1989
• Reynolds Price, A Whole New Life, 1994

HOSPITALS

• Michael Crichton, Five Patients: The Hospital Explained, 1989
• Anton Chekhov, Ward Six and Other Stories
• Harlan Gibbs, MD and Alan Duncan Ross, The Medicine of ER, or How We Almost Die, Basic Books, 1996
• Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness
• Peter E. Dans, MD, Doctors in the Movies: Boil the Water and Just Say Aah
• Stephen Sawicki, Animal Hospital, 1997
• Susan Garrett, Taking Care of Our Own: A Year in the Life of a Small Hospital, 1995

TOUGH DECISIONS

• Lisa Belkin, First Do No Harm, 1993
• Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord , The Scalpel and the Silver Bear
• Joycelyn Elders, Joycelyn Elders, MD: From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the USA
• Eileen L. Daniel, Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Health and Society, 6th edition
• Eileen L. Daniel, editor. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Health and Society, 1998, 3rd edition [ISBN# 0-697-39111-6]
• Carol Levine, editor, Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Bioethical Issues
  The Taking Sides books listed above contain numerous articles arranged in "pro and con pairs" on issues such as gun control, alcohol in moderation, secondhand smoke, Gulf War syndrome, childhood immunization, etc. These books are great resources for students preparing for health professional interviews.
• Former, Dr Paul, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights & the New War on the poor
  The author raises questions and challenges about Global Healthcare. Former calls for a paradigm shift in medical & public health practice that universally incorporates the principles of health as an essential human right. (The New Physician, January - February 2005, Page 2)

AGING

• Andrew Malcom, Someday: The Story of a Mother and her Son, 1992
• Phillip Roth, Patrimony: A True Story, 1991

OTHER PERSPECTIVES

• Jeff Drayer, The Cost-Effective Use of Leeches and Other Musings of a Medical School Survivor
• Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness, 1988
• Robert Coles, The Call of Stories, Teaching and the Moral Imagination, 1990
• Robert Coles, The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism Reprint 1994
• Robert Coles, A Robert Coles Omnibus, 1993
• Kathryn Hunter, Doctor as Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge, 1991
• Emily Martin, Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS, 1994
• Andrew Weil, Health and Healing, 1988
• Susan Sontag, Illness As Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, 1991
• Anne Hawkins, Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography, 1993
• Randollph M. Nesse & George C. Williams, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine,1996
• Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, 1987
• Catherine Marshall, Christy

MEDICAL ETHICS

• Samuel Gorovitz, Doctors' Dilemmas
• Samuel Gorovitz, Drawing The Line, Life, Death, and Ethical Choices in an American Hospital, 1991
• Eileen Nechas and Denise Foley, Unequal Treatment, What You Don't Know About How Women are Treated by the Medical Community
• Charles L. Bosk, Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure
• Gregory E. Pence, Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases that Have Shaped Medical Ethics with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Background
• Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine
• J. Warren Salmon, editor, The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Perspectives and Implications

MEDICAL SCIENCE

• Lewis Thomas, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher
  Other science books authored by Lewis Thomas are:
  • The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
  • The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher
  • Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
  • The Fragile Species

HISTORY

• James Harvey, Young American Health Quackery: Collected Essays
• Stuart Moore, Chiropractic in American: The History of a Medical Alternative, 1993
• Norman Gevitz, The D.O. as Osteopathic Medicine in America, 1982
• Sheil Rothman, Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History, 1994
• Harvey Young, The Medical Messiahs, A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America, 1967
• Norman Gevitz, Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America, 1988
• Jeffrey Fister, The Plaque Makers, 1994
• Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine
  Irvine Loudon, Editor, Western Medicine, An Illustrated History, 1997

ADDITIONAL LISTINGS

• Science Friday Reading List (from NPR)
• New York Medical Humanities a compendium of literature, art, films and videos encompassing medical themes and issues
• University of Buffalo Prehealth Site
• The Center of Literature Medicine and the Healthcare Professions

VETERINARY MEDICINE

• William Karesh, Appointment at the Ends of the World, a memoir
• Loretta Gage, If Wishes Were Horses. 1995
• a www listing maintained by Purdue University
• a www listing maintained by NetVet

In addition, keep current by regularly reading Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers:

• The New York Times (particularly the Tuesday and Sunday editions)
• The Wall Street Journal
• Discover
• American Medical News
• The New Physician (a magazine published by medical students)
• Scientific American
• Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
• The New England Journal of Medicine (weekly journal)
• Journal of the American Academy of Optometry for optometry