Biographical Information on Physician Writers
H-M
Thomas Gordon Hake
1809-1895
Hake graduated M.D. from Glasgow University in 1831. He practiced in London, was a friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and published most of his poetry after the age of fifty.
Background
Monro TK. The Physician as Man of Letters, Science and Action. Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone Limited; 1951.Poetry
Parables and Tales (1872)
New Symbols (1876)
The Poems of Thomas Gordon Hake (1971)
Michael Halberstam
1932-1980
Halberstam received his M.D. degree from Boston University in 1957. An internist practicing cardiology and medicine in Washington, D.C., he was senior medical editor of Modern Medicine, wrote newspaper articles, and one novel. Tragically, on December 5, 1980, he was surprised by an intruder in his home and shot. He helped the police apprehend the criminal, but died hours later of his wounds.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Wanting of Levine (1978)
Making the rounds with Sir William. Prism. 1974; 2: 29-31.
Judah Ha-Lev
1075-1141
Ha-Lev (Halevy and Halevi in various sources) spent most of his life in Andalusia, and served as physician to King Alfonso VI of Toledo. He wrote philosophical works, as well as secular and religioius poetry and, according to the Background article below, "no other poet has achieved the supreme position held by him in the history of Hebrew literature."
Background
Kunitz SJ. European Authors 1000-1900. New York: The H.W. Wilson Compnay; 1967.Poetry
Brody H, ed. Selected Poems of Jehudah Halevi. New York: Arno Press; 1973.
Albrecht Von Haller
1708-1777
Haller studied medicine in Tubingen, Leyden, London, and Paris; and practiced medicine from 1729 through 1736 in Bern. At the University of Gottingen he served as professor of medicine, anatomy, surgery, and botany. He is most noted for his extensive experiments in nerve and muscle function, his seminal Physiological Elements of the Human Body, and a monumental bibliography of medicine and botany. His poetry is praised by many, including Osler, though I have not been able to locate English translations.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Poetry
Die Alpen (1732)
William A. Hammond
1828-1900
Hammond received his medical degree from the University of the City of New York in 1848. He subsequently worked as assistant surgeon in the army at various outposts, as professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Maryland, as surgeon in the Civil War, and ultimately surgeon-general. After the war he became professor of neurology and mental disease at various institutions. He wrote extensively in his fields of interest, founded and contributed to several journals, and is considered, along with S. Weir Mitchell, one of the fathers of American neurology.
Background
Johnson J, Malone D. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons; 1930Fiction
Robert Severne (1867)
Dr. Grattan (1884)
Mr. Oldmixon (1885)
A Strong-minded Woman (1885)
The Son of Perdition (1898)
Edward W. Hard, JR.
1939-
A 1966 medical graduate of Columbia University, Hard specialized in surgery and emergency medicine, though the AMA lists internal medicine as his specialty.
Background
Contemporary Authors Fiction Sum VII - A Novel (1979)
Alan Hart
1890-1962
Though Hart was born Alberta Lucille Hart, a biologic female, he considered and presented himself as male, and graduated from the University of Oregon Medical school in 1917 as Alan L. Hart. He pursued a career in radiology, as well as writing the fiction listed below.
Background
The Alan Lucill Hart Story
Katz JN, ed. Gay/Lesbian Almanac, 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers; ? yearFiction
Doctor Mallory (1935)
The Undaunted (1936)
In the Lives of Men (1937)
Dr. Finlay Sees It Through (1942)
Sir Henry Head
1861-1940
After studying in Europe, Head pursued medicine at Cambridge, graduating M.B. in 1890, and M.D. in 1892. His M.D. thesis was published in Brain, which he was later to edit; and he went on to an illustrious career in neurology. He made many fundamental neurologic observations, some based on neurosurgical procedures performed on himself, and was knighted in 1927.
Background
Dictionary of National Biography 1931-1940
Henry Head Centenary. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc.; 1961.
Reich SG. Destroyers and Other Verses - Henry Head, the Poet. Archives of Neurology. 1988; 45: 1257-1260.Poetry
Destroyers and Other Verses (1919)
John Hejinian
1941-
Hejinian received his medical degree from Harvard University in 1968, and went into psychiatry, which he practices in San Francisco.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Extreme Remedies (1974)
David Hellerstein
1953-
A 1980 medical graduate of Stanford University, Hellerstein trained in psychiatry and has been on the staffs of Beth Israel and Mount Sinai Medical Centers in New York City. In 1980 he won a Pushcart Prize for one of his essays, and from 1984 through 1986 he was a fellow at MacDowell Colony. In addition to the books listed below, Hellerstein has written for a number of national magazines.
Background
Contemporary Authors
David Hellerstein, M.D. Psychiatrist and WriterFiction
Loving Touches (1987)NonFiction
Battles of Life and Death (1986)
A Family of Doctors (1994)
Cecil G. Helman
1944-
Born and raised in South Africa, Helman graduated medicine at the Univesity of CapeTown Medical School in 1967. In 1969, he moved to London, England, where he did further study in social anthropology. He now serves as Senior Lecturer at the Department of Primary Care & Population Sciences of the Royal Free & University College Medical School, London. In addition to his family practice and writing, in March of 2001 he convened a course on Cross-cultural Primary Care.
Background
http://www.cecilhelman.comFiction
The Golden Toenails of Ambrosio P (1990)Poetry
The Exploding Newspaper & Other Fables (1980)NonFiction
The Body of Frankenstein's Monster: Essays in Myth and Medicine (1992)
Culture, Health, and Illness (1995)
James Ene Henshaw
1924-
Born in Nigeria, Henshaw received his M.D. degree from the National University of Ireland in 1949. In Nigeria he has worked as a medical consultant, controller of medical services, and on the National Councils on Health, among other duties. His plays are frequently produced in his homeland, especially in schools.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Drama
This is Our Chance: Plays from West Africa (1957)
Children of the Goddess, and Other Plays (1964)
Dinner for Promotion (1967)
Jack Hibberd
1940-
Hibberd studied medicine at the University of Melbourne, Australia, graduating in 1964. He practiced in Melbourne until 1973, while writing and directing a number of plays, and has continued to write, not only plays, but translations and criticism.
Background
Contemporary Authors Drama - A Stretch of the Imagination (1973)
Dimboola and The Last of the Knucklemen (1974)
Three Popular Plays (1976)
The Overcoat and Sin (1977)
Peggy Sue (1982)Poetry
Le Vin des Amants: Poems from Baudelaire (1977)
David Hilfiker
1945-
It was unclear to me whether to include Hilfiker in this listing of "creative" writers, but because he is increasingly recognized as a physician who writes, and who has perfected a type of personal essay, I thought I should. After earning his M.D. degree at the University of Minnesota in 1974, he specialized in Family Practice, and has devoted much of his medical time to work with AIDS patients and the disadvantaged in Washington, D.C. Among his other honors, he was asked to give the 1997 commencement address at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
NonFiction
Healing the Wounds - A Physician Looks at His Work (1985)
Not All of Us Are Saints: A Doctor's Journey with the Poor (1994)
Richard Clark Hirschorn
1933-
Hirschorn graduated from Harvard University Medical School in 1958. After surgical and urologic residencies, he opened a private urologic practice in Massachusetts.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
A Pride of Healers (1977)
Target Mayflower (1977)
Heinrich Hoffman
1809-1894
Hoffmann studied in Heidelberg, Halle, and Paris; and received his medical degree in 1833. Initially he worked as a general practitioner, then became director of the state mental hospital in Frankfurt am Main. He is perhaps best remembered as the creator of Struwwelpeter (Slovenly Peter), an offensive boy he used to illustrate principles of good manners. Over the years, many have translated these stories, including Mark Twain.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Fiction
Prince Greenwood and Pearl-of-Price, with Their Good Donkey, Kind and Wise! (1874)
Struwwelpeter: Merry Stories and Funny Pictures (1972)
Slovenly Betsy (1995)
Oliver Wendell Holmes
1809-1894
First studying law, Holmes turned to medicine, and graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1836. He practiced for ten years, and in 1847 became professor of anatomy and physiology and dean at Harvard. Medically he is noted for his revolutionary 1843 paper on childbed fever, his emphasis on observation and medical statistics, his role in founding the American Medical Association, and his criticism of many of the ineffective treatments of his day. His literary production was also considerable, including The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (ten thousand copies sold within three days of publication), and many poems ("The chambered nautilus," "The wonderful one hoss shay"), some still read today. Indeed, according to Sir William Osler, Holmes was "the most successful combination which the world has ever seen of the physician and the man of letters." (An Alabama Student. London: Oxford University Press;1908)
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Tilton EM. Amiable Autocrat: A Biography of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. New York: Henry Shuman; 1947.Works
Complete Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1987)
Miroslav Holub
1923-1998
Holub studied science and medicine at Charles University in Prague, and graduated with an M.D. degree in 1953. In addition to publishing over one hundred forty scientific papers in his field of immunology, he has written many books of essays, "essaylets," and poetry. From 1968 through 1990 his work was banned by the Soviets in his native Czechoslovakia; but he is now recognized as one of his country's most imaginative writers, and, according to poet Ted Hughes in 1990, "one of the half dozen most important poets writing anywhere.".
Poetry
Selected Poems (1967)
Although (1971)
Notes of a Clay Pigeon (1977) Interferon, or On Theater (1982)
On the Contrary and Other Poems (1984)
Vanishing Lung Syndrome (1990)
Poems Before and After (1990)
Intensive Care (1996)
Supposed to Fly (1996)NonFiction
The Dimension of the Present Moment and Other Essays (1990)
The Jingle Bell Principle (1992)
The Long Disease (1996)
Shedding Life: Humans, and Other Freaks of Nature (1997)
H. Richard Hornberger
1924-1997
Hornberger received his medical degree from Cornell Medical School, specialized in surgery, and served as an army doctor with the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. After the war, he worked briefly in a veterans' hospital before opening a surgical practice in Waterville, Maine, which he maintained until retirement in 1988. His war experiences were the basis for his very popular novel, M*A*S*H, which was made into a Cannes Film Festival prize-winning movie in 1970, and a long-running television series.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
M*A*S*H (1968)
M*A*S*H Goes to Maine (1971)
M*A*S*H Mania (1977)
Khaled Hosseini
1965-
After immigrating to the United States in 1980, Hosseini pursued medical education at the University of San Diego, receiving his MD degree in 1993. He is an internist, active in international charitable work, including serving since 2006 as goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Refugee Agency.
Background
Contemporary Authors
http://www.khaledhosseini.com
Fiction
The Kite Runner (2003)
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
Frank D. Huyler
1964-
Huyler received his MD degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and completed a residency in Emergency Medicine at the University of New Mexico Hospitals in Albuquerque. In addition to his ER career, and the writing listed below (which I have arbitrarily categorized as fiction), he has had poetry published in such prestigious magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Georgia Review, and Poetry.
Fiction
The Blood of Strangers: Stories from Emergency Medicine (1999)
Edward H. Hume
1876-1957
After graduating with an M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1901, Hume went to India, then China, where he assisted in the founding of a hospital and medical school. Back in the United States, he was involved in the reorganization of Columbia University's medical school. Throughout his life, he remained deeply involved with education in China. Most of his writing is nonfiction, about Chinese and Western medicine and their practitioners; but one small volume of his poetry was published the year of his death.
Background
The National Cyclopeda of American Biography, vol 42 (1958)Poetry
Songs along the Way (1957)NonFiction
Doctors Courageous (1950)
Wil Joseph Huygen
1922-
Huygen earned his M.D. degree at the University of Utrecht in 1949. From 1952 through 1979 he practiced general medicine, and subsequently was an occupational health officer. As far as I can tell, none of his other writing has been translated into English.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Gnomes (1977)
Yusuf Idris
1927-
Idris studied medicine in Cairo, graduating from the Qasr al-Ayni Hospital in 1951. Initially he worked as a medical inspector in the Department of Health, where he witnessed the living conditions in the poor sections of Cairo, but when he began having literary success, he gradually gave up medicine.
Background
Allen R. Introduction to In the Eye of the Beholder. Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica;1978.
Allen R, ed. Critical Perspectives on Yusuf Idris. Three Continents Press; 1994.Fiction
In the Eye of the Beholder (1978)
The Cheapest Nights (1989)
Rings of Burnished Brass (1992)
The Piper Dies and Other Stories (1992)
Sinners (1995)
City of Love and Ashes (1999)
Rita Iovino
?-
Iovino graduated from the State University of New York Health Science Center in Brooklyn, and was licensed in medicine in 1985. A pediatrician, she has been very active in the American Physicians' Poetry Association, and has served as the literary editor of that organization's quarterly publication.
Poetry
Physician's Odyssey (1988)
Roland Jefferson
1939-
A 1965 Howard University medical graduate, Jefferson went on to specialize in psychiatry, which he practiced in Los Angeles. In addition to his fiction, he has written and directed several films.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The School on 103rd Street (1976)
A Card for the Players (1978)
Time of the Jihad (1984)
Somewhere between Two Rivers (1990)Film
Death Drug (1978)
Perfume (1989)
George Oliver Jelly
1909-
Jelly received his M.Ch. degree in 1930 from Oxford, and was a consultant surgeon at Manchester Regional Hospital from 1948 through 1974. He also served with the Royal Medical Corps during the second world war.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
We Three (1965)Poetry
The Two, the Three, and the Four (1973)
Fives Court (1979)
Edward Jenner
1749-1823
Jenner learned medicine as an apprentice, and subsequently as a student of John Hunter at St. George's Hospital, London. His scientific and medical acumen and contributions, including the small pox vaccine, are legendary; but he is also noted by both Lowbury and Monro to be a poet of some note. Unfortunately, other than their references to particular poems, I have not been able to locate an edition of his poetry.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Janet O. Jeppson
1926-
Jeppson received her M.D. degree from New York University in 1952. After psychiatric residency she opened a psychiatric practice in New York City. In addition to her practice and collaboration with her (now deceased) husband, Isaac Asimov, on a number of books, she has written detective and science fiction works as J.O. Jeppson or Janet Asimov.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Second Experiment (1974)
The Last Immortal (1980)
The Mysterious Cure and Other Stories of Pshrinks Anonymous (1985)
Mind Transfer (1988)
The Package in Hyperspace (1989)
Pshrinks Anonymous (1990)
Per Christian Jersild
1935-
Jersild received his M.D. degree from the Karolinksa Institute in 1962. He specialized in social medicine, and has worked both as a psychiatrist and an administrator. In 1981 he received the Grand Prize for a Novel from the Swedish Society for Promotion of Literature. His novels about the welfare state and technology have been very popular in his native Sweden, and several are now available in English.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Animal Doctor (1975)
After the Flood (1986)
Children's Island (1986)
House of Babel (1987)
A Living Soul (1988)
Alice A. Jones
1949-
Jones graduated with an M.D. degree from New York Medical College in 1978. She was subsequently certified in internal medicine, then psychiatry; and practices psychoanalysis in California. Her collection, The Knot, won the Beatrice Hawley award for poetry.
Poetry
The Knot (1992)
Robert Farras Joseph
1935-
Joseph received his M.D. degree from Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital of Philadelphia. After service in the Viet Nam War, he worked in adolescent medicine in Los Angeles. In addition to the novels listed below, he has written a number of plays, screenplays, and television scripts.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Diva (1976)
Kate's Way (1977)
Odile (1977)
Love's Fervent Fury (1979)
The Buccaneer (1980)
The Aquarius Transfer (1981)
Mercy Hospital (1982)
Johann Jung-Stilling
1740-1817
Jung-Stilling studied medicine at Strasbourg (where he knew Goethe), practiced in Elberfeld, and was recognized for his contributions to cataract surgery. His best known writing is his autobiography (part of which was edited by Goethe), full of details of village life, but he also wrote novels and tracts on religious and spritual subjects. Little of his work is translated into English.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.NonFiction
The Life of John Henry Stilling (1831)
James Kahn
1947-
After graduating from the University of Chicago with an M.D. degree in 1974, Kahn did an emergency medicine residency and became an ER physician specializing in trauma. He is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians. An advisor to Steven Spielberg for the resuscitation scene in the movie ET, Kahn has worked on novelizations of several of Spielberg's films. He has also written several scripts for the television shows St. Elsewhere and E/R, in addition to novels.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Diagnosis: Murder (1978)
World Enough and Time (1980)
Time's Dark Laughter (1982)
Poltergeist (novelization of the film) (1982)
Star Wars Trilogy (novelization of the films) (1993)
The Echo Vector (1987)
Timefall (1987)
Murrary M. Kappelman
1931-
Kappelman earned his M.D. degree at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1955 and became a professor of pediatrics and associate dean of education and special programs at his alma mater. In addition to several books on children and teenagers, and articles in popular magazines, he has written one novel.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Child Healers (1971)
John Keats
1795-1821
Should Keats be considered a physician writer? He was apprenticed to a local surgeon, became a student at the medical school of Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals, and obtained the licence of the Society of Apothecaries; all of which training some observers say make him the equivalent of a general or family practitioner of our day. What is clear is that he never practiced, having devoted the rest of his short life and dwindling energies to poetry. But his involvement with medicine, however classified, is something which fascinates many to this day.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Goellnicht DC. The Poet-physician - Keats and Medical Science. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1984.
Smith H. Keats and Medicine.Newport, Isle of Wight: Cross Publishing; 1995.
Wells WA. A Doctor's Life of John Keats. New York: Vantage Press, Inc.; 1959.Poetry
Garrod HW, ed. Poetical Works (1958)
David H. Keller
1880-1966
Keller graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1903 (thereby overlapping William Carlos Williams, class of '06, by one year). Initially he practiced general medicine in Russell, Pennsylvania, but turned to psychiatry, treating victims of "shell shock" during World War I. After that he worked in various state hospitals for the mentally ill, and in his private neuropsychiatric practice.
Background
Memoir by Mrs. David Keller, University of Pennsylvania archives.
Spencer P. In Memoriam: David Henry Keller. Introduction to The Folsom Flint and Other Curious Tales. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House;1969.Fiction
The Sign of the Burning Heart (1938)
The Devil and the Doctor (1940)
Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Fantasy and Horror (1947)
The Solitary Hunters and The Abyss (1948)
The Eternal Conflict (1949)
The Homunculus (1949)
The Lady Decides (1950)
Tales from the Underwood (1952)
The Folsom Flint and Other Curious Tales (1969)
The Last Magician: Nine Stories from Weird Tales (1978)
The Human Termites (1979)
Arabella Kenealy
?-1932
Kenealy studied at the London School of Medicine for Women. She practiced for only four years, when illness forced her to retire from medicine, and she turned to writing. In addition to the novel listed below (which I have not been able to locate anywhere), she wrote on feminism and evolutionary aspects of sex.
Background
Monro TK. The Physician as Man of Letters, Science and Action. Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone Limited; 1951Fiction
Dr. Janet of Harley Street (1893)
Justinus Kerner
1786-1862
Kerner studied medicine at Tubingen and practiced medicine in several towns before settling in Weinsberg, Germany, where he wrote one of the first accurate descriptions of botulism. Kerner wrote poetry much of his life, founding, along with Ludwig Uhland, the Swabian group of Romantic poets. Some of his poems were set to music by Schumann, but unfortunately I have not been able to locate English translations of his poetic work, except for one short poem translated in Apollo by Lowbury. In addition, he assisted in the publication of the works of Friedrich Holderlin (whom he had helped care for as a medical student) and wrote about somnambulism, spiritualism, and magnetism.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Hardin J, Schweitzer CE, eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 90. Detroit: Gale Research, Inc.Poetry
Lyrische Gedichte (1854)
James Kerr
1923-
Kerr, according to the dust jacket of The Clinic, is the pseudonym of a "practicing physician." So far I have no other documentation of his credentials.
Fiction
The Clinic (1968)
No Deadly Drug (1972)
Emergency Room (1975)
Geoffrey Keynes
1887-1982
Keynes, brother of the economist, Maynard Keynes, showed literary interests and involvement from his Cambridge days: beginning study of William Blake, friendship with Rupert Brooke, work with Sir William Osler on a Sir Thomas Browne bibliography. In 1913, while living in Bloomsbury Square, London, as a house surgeon at St. Barholomew's Hospital, he, along with Sir Henry Head, resuscitated Virginia Stephen (Woolf) from her first suicide attempt. After receiving his M.D. degree (Cambridge) he practiced as a surgeon, served in both world wars, and made important contributions to the fields of blood transfusion and breast cancer treatment. He became Senior Surgeon at "Bart's," and was knighted for his numerous surgical contributions. His additional awards, titles, honorary and legitimate positions, honorary degrees, and tributes are too numerous to list.
Keynes was not, strictly speaking a "creative" writer, a term which he probably would have abhorred, but made so many contributions to medical and literary bibliography (barely touched on below), and wrote such a fascinating autobiography, that, whether he would have liked it or not, he flocks together with these birds of a feather. Only recently has his bibliographic work suffered some criticism, namely, for omission of Rupert Brooke's homoerotic letters from his 1968 The Letters of Rupert Brooke.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsNonFiction
A Bibliography of the Works of Dr. John Donne, Dean of Saint Paul's (1914)
A Bibliography of William Blake (1921)
A Bibliography of Sir Thomas Browne, kt., M.D.
Jane Austen: A Bibliography (1929)
Blake Studies: Notes on His Life and Works (1949)
The Personality of William Harvey (1949)
A Bibliography of Rupert Brooke (1954)
A Bibliography of Siegfried Sassoon (1962)
The Life of William Harvey (1966)
Perri Klass
1958-
Klass earned her M.D. degree at Harvard University Medical School, class of 1986, did a pediatric residency, and practices pediatrics in Boston. Her writing has included columns for the New York Times, Discover, and other literary and popular publications; and she has received O.Henry awards for her short fiction.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Recombinations (1985)
I Am Having an Adventure (1986)
Other Women's Children (1990)NonFiction
A Not So Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student (1987)
Baby Doctor (1992)
Taking Care of Your Own (1992)
Harold Klawans
1937-1997
After graduating with an M.D. degree from the University of Illinois in 1962, Klawans became a neurologist, and professor of neurology and pharmacology at Rush Medical College. He has written extensively in the fields of extrapyramidal disorders, neuropharmacology, and medical history; served as editor of the journal Clinical Pharmacology and of the encyclopedic Handbook of Clinical neurology; while publishing several novels as well. His study Chekhov's Lie, written just three years before his own untimely death, deals with the challenges of combining the writing with the medical life.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Sins of Commision (1982)
The Third Temple (1983)
And Mother Makes Thirteen (1999)NonFiction
Toscanini's Fumble and Other Tales of Clinical Neurology (1988)
Newton's Madness: Further Tales of Clinical Neurology (1990)
Trials of an Expert Witness: Tales of Clinical Neurology and the Law (1991)
Life, Death, and In Between : Tales of Clinical Neurology (1992)
Chekhov's Lie (1997)
Why Michael Couldn't Hit and Other Tales of the Neurology of Sports (1998)
Defending the Cavewoman and Other Tales of Evolutionary Neurology (2000)
Robert Klitzman
1958-
A 1985 graduate of the Yale University School of Medicine, Klitzman is a psychiatrist. His experiences in Papua, New Guinea, where he studied kuru, are mentioned often in his writing, which sometimes defies categorization as fiction or nonfiction.
Fiction
A Yearlong Night - Tales of a Medical Internship (1989)NonFiction
The Trembling Mountain: A Personal Memoir of Kuru, Cannibals, and Mad Cow Disease (1998)
In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist (1995)
Being Positive: The Lives of Men and Women with HIV (1997)
Charles H. Knickerbocker
1922-
Knickerbocker attended University of Pennsylvania Medical School, graduating in 1946. He worked as an internist in Bar Harbor, Maine, where he was chief of medicine at the Mt. Desert Island Hospital.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Boy Came Back (1951)
Juniper Island (1958)
The Dynasty (1962)
Summer Doctor (1963)
The Hospital War (1966)
Fool's Gold (1992)
Bermard Knight
1931-
Knight graduated from the University of Wales B. Surg. in 1954, M.R.C. Path. 1964, and M.D. 1966. Also in 1966 he received his Diploma in Medical Jurisprudence. He has worked as a forensic pathologist, and as lecturer at several universities. His writing includes, in addition to the novels below, radio and television scripts.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Lately Deceased (1963)
The Thread of Evidence (1965)
Mistress Murder (1966)
Russian Roulette (1968)
Policeman's Progress (1969)
Tiger at Bay (1971)
Lion Rampant (1972)
Madoc, Prince of America (1977)
The Poisoned Chalice (1998)
The Sanctuary Seeker (1998)
Crowner's Quest (1999)
Siegfried Kra
1930-
Born in Poland, Kra received his M.D. degree from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1960; and became a cardiologist and clinical associate professor of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. He hosted a National Public Radio series on heart disease and wrote several books on medicine for the lay public. The book listed below is hard to classify - a blend of fiction and nonfiction, like some of his Yale surgical colleague Richard Selzer's work.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Three-legged Stallion and Other Tales from a Doctor's Notebook (1989)
Norman Kreitman
1927-
Kreitman graduated M.B., B.S. in 1950, and M.D. in 1959, from University of London. A psychiatrist, he practiced in Edinburgh and wrote several books on psychiatry, psychiatric research, and parasuicide. In addition to the literary works listed below, he edited in 1952 The Dove in Flames: An Anthology in Modern Verse, devoted to the theme of pacifism, and dedicated to fellow physician poet Dannie Abse.
Poetry
Touching Rock (1987)
Against Leviathan (1989)NonFiction
The Roots of Metaphor - A Multidisciplinary Study in Aesthetics (1999)
F. Reinhold Kreutzwald
1803-1882
After graduating with a medical degree from Tartu University, Estonia, Kreutzwald worked as municipal health officer in Voru throughout his professional life. His major literary effort was the creation of a national epic, Kalevid, using both traditional folk songs as well as original poetry. So far I have not been able to locate an English translation of the epic or parts of it.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.NonFiction
Kalevipoeg: An Ancient Estonian Tale (1982)
Old Estonian Fairy Tales (1985)
Vincas Kudirka
1858-1899
Kudirka studied medicine at Warsaw University but practiced only briefly because, like fellow physician writers Keats, Chekhov, and Percy, he contracted tuberculosis at a young age. Before this he had founded the underground literary-political journal Varpas, and he devoted the rest of his short life to editing and contributing to this publication, as well as translating works from various languages into Lithuanian. As far as I know he is the only physician writer who has composed his or her country's national anthem (first performed one week after his death), and been memorialized in the name of a city (Kudirkos Naumiestis). Unfortunately, little of his poetry has been translated into English.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Poetry
Poetry of Vincas KudirkaNonFiction
Memoirs of a Lithuanian Bridge (1962)
Ronald David Laing
1927-1989
A 1951 medical graduate of the University of Glasgow, Laing became a psychiatrist. He has worked at the Glasgow Royal Mental Hospital, the Tavistock Clinic in London, and founded and chaired the Philadelphia Association in London, devoted to novel approaches to the treatment of schizophrenia. Accused by some of being an "antipsychiatrist" (and forced to resign from the medical register of the General Medical Council in 1987), Laing raised many questions about the definitions of sanity and insanity, and some of his poetry can be seen as variations on this work.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5214/laing.htmlPoetry
Knots (1970)
Do You Love Me?: An Entertainment in Conversation and Verse (1976)
Sonnets (1980)NonFiction
The Divided Self: A Study of Sanity and Madness (1960)
The Self and Others: Further Studies in Sanity and Madness (1961)
Self and Others (1970)
George Burt Lake
1880-1943
Lake graduated from Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1902. He practiced in Indiana, lectured at Purdue University, and served as surgeon in the Army Medical Corps in the Philippines in 1913 and Mexico in 1916; and as commanding officer of the General Hospital in Indianapolis during World War I.
Background
McDonough ML. Poet-Physicians: An Anthology of Medical Poetry Written by Physicians. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas; 1945.Poetry
An Apostle of Joy (1928)
Hilltops (1932)
Acorn of God (1941)
The Spice of Life (?)
Vincent Lam
1974-
Of Vietnamese heritage, Lam received his MD degree from the University of Toronto in 1999. He works as an emergency room and expedition medicine physician. Bloodletting won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and is being adapted for a Movie Network series.
Background
http://www.vincentlam.ca/about.php
Fiction
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (2006)
Cholon, Near Forgotten (due 2007)
Frantisek Langer
1888-1965
After completing his medical studies in Prague, Langer served in the Czechoslovakian army during World War I, fought the Communists in the Russian Civil War, and continued to serve in the medical corps afterwards. During World War II he lived in England; it was not until the late 1950's that the communist government in Czechoslovakia allowed him to publish his writing.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Drama
The Camel through the Needle's Eye (1920)
Grand Hotel Nevada (1927)NonFiction
The Legends of Prague (1996)
Ray L. Lascola
1915-
Lascola receved his M.D. degree from Louisiana State University Medical Center in 1941. He specialized in pediatrics, which he practiced in California; and received the Oliver Wendell Holmes Memorial Award for medical fiction writing.
Background
Contemporary Authors Fiction The Creole (1961)
Charles Lebaron
1943-
After working as a social worker for several years, Lebaron entered Harvard Medical School at age thirty four, graduating in 1984. He is certified in medicine and pediatrics, and works for the Public Health Service.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Diamond Sky (1975)
Fragments of Light (1984)NonFiction
Gentle Vengeance - An Account of the First Year at Harvard Medical School (1981)
Benjamin Lee
1921-
Lee received his M.D. degree from Guy's Hospital Medical School in about 1944, and practiced as a family doctor in London. In addition to novels, he has written several screenplays.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Paganini Strikes Again (1970)
The Man in Fifteen (1972)
The Frog Report (1974)
It Can't Be Helped (1976)
C. Louis Leipoldt
1880-1947
The details of Leipoldt's medical training are unknown to me so far, and apparently he had little to do with medicine afterwards. Versatile, writing in all genres, he expressed among other things the humiliation felt by the Afrikaners after the South African War, and is credited with writing some of the first important plays in Afrikaans. Unfortunately, little of his extensive work has been translated into English.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Fiction
Stormwrack (1980)NonFiction
Bushveld Doctor (1938)Letters
Dear Dr. Bolus: Letters from Clanwilliam, London, New York & Europe Written Mainly during His Medical Education (1979)
Stanislaw Lem
1921-
Born in Ukraine, Lem received an M.D. degree from the University of Kracow and worked as a research assistant in a scientific institution. Just how long he continued his medical work is unclear to me, as he began publishing numerous science fiction works. At least one, Solaris, was turned into a 1971 film.
Background
Ziegfeld RE. Stanislaw Lem. New York: F. Ungar Publishing Co.; 1985
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/slem.htmFiction
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (1973)
Return from the Stairs (1980)
Solaris (1970)
Cyberiad (1974)
Chain of Chance (1984)
Fiasco (1987)
Eden (1989)
A Stanislaw Lem Reader (1997)NonFiction
Highcastle: A Remembrance (1997)
Carlo Levi
1902-1975
A practicing physician (the details of his training are not yet known to me), Levi, a Jew, was exiled in1935 to a small village in southern Italy for his anti-fascist stands. There he treated the villagers, and while hiding out from the Nazis in the 1940's wrote his acclaimed memoir/novel, Christ Stopped at Eboli, from his reminiscences. He subsequently devoted his time entirely to writing and painting, and served in the Italian senate from 1963 through 1975..
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Fiction
Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945)
The Watch (1951)
The Linden Trees (1962)NonFiction
Of Fear and Freedom (1947)
Harry Levy
1944-
Levy graduated with an M.D. degree from New York University School of Medicine in 1969, and earned an M.P.H. degree from Yale in 1982. A specialist in preventive medicine and public health, he founded PES, Inc. and Health Opinion Research, Inc., and serves as executive editor of the interactive medical web site Cyberounds. He addition to the novel below, Levy has made documentary films about his Bellevue internship year (Interned), and an asthmatic family (Take a Deep Breath).
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Chain of Custody (1998)
Henry Clay Lewis
1825-1850
Lewis graduated from the Louisville Medical Institute in 1846, but was unable to establish a viable medical practice. He took up writing sketches in the Southwestern humorist style, and they were published in 1850 (the year he drowned making a medical call) under the pseudonym of Madison Tensas. His work is noteworthy for its sympathetic treatment of African-Americans.
Background
http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/dir/lewis_henry_clay/index.html
Louisiana Swamp Doctor: The Life and Writings of Henry Clay Lewis, Alias "Madison Tensas, M.D.” by Anderson, John Q.
Fiction
Odd Leaves from the Life of a Louisiana Swamp Doctor (1850)
Michael W. Lieberman
1941 -
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Lieberman received his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1967. Following specialty training he began his career as a pathologist, and is currently Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pathology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.
Poetry
Praising with My Body (1992)
A History of the Sweetness of the World (1995)
Sojourn at Elmhurst (1998)
Remnant: Poems (2002)
Jorge De Lima
1895-1953
While still a medical student at the University of Brazil at Rio de Janeiro, from which he graduated in 1916, Lima published his first book of poetry. He subsequently practiced medicine, and served as Professor of Natural History and Hygiene, as well as Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Literature. He is considered an important representative of Brazilian regionalist poetry, later developed a surrealist style, and wrote several novels. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate many English translations of his work.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Wakeman J, ed. World Authors 1950-1970. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company; 1975.Poetry
Fitts D, ed. Anthology of Contemporary Latin-American Poetry (1942)
Nist JA, ed. Modern Brazilian Poetry (1962)
Jay Liveson
1937-
Liveson graduated from New York University School of Medicine in 1963 and has specialized in clinical neurophysiology. He has written textbooks in his field, is an associate professor at his alma mater, and was the first Visiting Professor in Neurology at Tel Aviv University.
Poetry
To Slay the Dragon (1996)
To Skim the Smoke (1997)
Hanging On (1998)
Thomas Lodge
1557?-1625
After trying to support himself by writing and by seafaring, Lodge studied medicine at Avignon and received an M.D. degree from Oxford in 1602. He practiced in London and the Netherlands and wrote several medical works, including A Treatise of the Plague (1603), in addition to a variety of plays, novels, translations, verse, and pamplets. He is perhaps best remembered as the author of Rosalynde, on which Shakespeare based As You Like It.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Works
The Complete Works of Thomas Lodge (4 vol.) New York: Russell & Russell; 1963.
Edward Lowbury
1913-
Lowbury graduated B.M., B.Ch. from University College, Oxford, in 1939, and after further study at London Hospital became a pathologist/bacteriologist. He has received many awards over the years, beginning, perhaps, with the Newdigate Prize (poetry) at Oxford (1934), and been member and fellow of many prestigious organizations, including the Royal Society of Literature. In addition to medical writing, he has written criticism, biography (including one of his father-in-law, Andrew Young, listed below), many volumes of poetry, and edited anthologies (including Apollo - An Anthology of Poems by Doctor Poets).
Background
Vinson J. Contemporary Poets, 3rd ed. New York: St. Martin's Press; 1980.
Lovelock Y, ed. Physic Meet and Metaphysic - A Celebration on Edward Lowbury's 80th Birthday. Salzburg: Salzburg University Press; 1993.Poetry
Collected Poems (1993)NonFiction
Thomas Campion: Poet, Composer, Physician (1970)
Hallmarks of Poetry: Reflections on a Theme (1994)
To Shirk No Idleness: Critical Biography of the Poet Andrew Young (1998)
P. Habberton Lulham
1865-1940
Lulham qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. in London (Guy's Hospital) in 1896. He practiced in London, but intermittently, due to ill health; and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Background
McDonough ML. Poet-Physicians: An Anthology of Medical Poetry Written by Physicians. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas; 1945.Poetry
Songs from the Downs and Dunes (1908)
The Other Side of Silence (191?)
Kettle Songs (1922)
Devices and Desires (?)
Ephraim Luzzato
1729-1792
Luzzatto received his M.D. degree from the University of Padua in 1751. He practiced in Padua, Livorno, and Trieste; and in 1763 moved to London where he was attending physician at the Hospital of the Portuguese Jewish Community. Unofortunately, I have not been able to locate English translations of his (Hebrew) poetry.
Background
Savitz HA. Dr. Ephraim Luzzatto, Physician and Poet. Rhode Island Medical Journal. 1973; 56:333-39.
Mirsky D. The Life and Work of Ephraim Luzzatto. New York: Ktav; 1987.
G. Frank Lydston
1858-1923
An 1879 graduate of Bellevue Hospital Medical School in New York, Lydston became a specialist in genito-urinary surgery and venereal disease. He taught, wrote prolifically in his field, managed what was said to be an extremely lucrative private practice, and became professor of criminal anthropology at Kent College of Law as well.
Background
Malone D, ed. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons; 1933.Fiction
Over the Hookah - The Tales of a Talkative Doctor (1896)
Poker Jim, Gentleman, and Other Tales and Sketches (1908)
Trusty Five-fifteen (1921)Drama
Blood of the Fathers (1912)
J.B. Lyons
1922-
Lyons graduated M.B. in 1945, M.D. in 1949 from National University of Ireland University College, Dublin. After further training and a stint as ship's surgeon, he opened a neurologic practice, and became Librarian and Professor of the History of Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. In addition to medical writing, he has written much on literature and medicine topics.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction (as Michael Fitzwilliam) -
A Question of Surgery(1960)
When Doctors Differ (1961)
Southdowns General Hospital (1963)NonFiction
James Joyce and Medicine (1973)
Medicine and Literature in Ireland, in Journal of the Irish Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons. 1973; 3: 3-9.
Oliver St. John Gogarty (1976)
The Mystery of Oliver Goldsmith's Medical Degree (1978)
Oliver St. John Gogarty: The Man of Many Talents (1980)
Thrust Syphilis Down to Hell and Other Rejoyceana: Studies in the Border-lands of Literature and Medicine (1988)
John Edward Mack
1929-
Mack graduated from Harvard with an M.D. degree in 1955. He specialized in psychiatry, becoming a professor at Harvard in 1972. He has also served on the editorial board of the American Psychoanalytic Association. In 1976 he won a Pulitzer Prize in biography for A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsNonFiction
A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence (1976)
Vivienne: the Life and Suicide of an Adolescent Girl (with Holly Hickler - 1981)
Sir Andrew Macphail
1864-1938
Macphail received his M.D. degree from McGill University in 1891. After a period of practice and teaching, he became McGill's first professor of the history of medicine, the first editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and an editor of The University Magazine. He was knighted in 1918. A major in the Canadian army medical service during the First World War, and an acquaintance of John McCrae, he wrote an essay on the poet, "An essay in character," that accompanied the 1919 edition of McCrae's In Flanders Fields and Other Poems.
Background
Benson E, Toye W. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. New York: Oxford University Press; 1997.Fiction
The Vine of Sibmah; A Relation of the Puritans (1906)Drama
The Land: A Play of Character, in One Act with Five Scenes (1914)NonFiction
Essays in Puritanism (1905)
Essays in Politics (1909)
Essays in Fallacy (1910)
Three Persons (1929)
The Master's Wife (1939)
George Brown Mair
1914-
Having graduated M.B., Ch.B. in 1936 from the University of Glasgow; and M.D. in 1936 from Edinburgh; Mair became a surgeon, specializing in plastic surgery. He also directed a medical clinic in central Scotland, was the founder of Scottish Exit, a group devoted to the concept of voluntary euthanasia, and has lectured widely. Only a few of his many books are listed below.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Surgeon's Saga (1950)
Doctor Goes East (1952)
The Day Khrushchev Panicked (1962)
Miss Turquoise: A David Grant Story (1965)
The Girl from Peking (1967)NonFiction
Confessions of a Surgeon (1974)
Escape from Surgery (1975)
Andrew Malcolm
1927-
Malcolm graduated from the University of Toronto with an M.D. degree in 1951, and became a psychiatrist. He has practiced in New York, London, and Toronto.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Rip 7 (1977)
Maxwell Maltz
1899-1975
A 1919 medical graduate of Columbia University, Maltz studied plastic surgery in Europe, and practiced it in New York City. He was a member of many international surgical organizations; and lectured and taught in many countries. In addition to his fiction, some of which is listed below, he wrote a number of inspirational and popular books, and several plays.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Goddess with the Golden Eye (1956)
The Miracle of Dr. Fleming (1957)
The Time is Now (1975)
Bernard De Mandeville
1670-1733
In 1691 Mandeville graduated in medicine from Leiden University, but practiced only briefly before settling in England. There he became famous, and somewhat notorious, for his provocative philosophical ideas.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Primer I. Mandeville Studes: New Explorations in the Art and Thought of Dr. Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff; 1975.Poetry
Hundert EJ, ed. The Fable of the Bees: And Other Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing; 1997.
Wishes to a Godson, with Other Miscellany Poems (1975)NonFiction
Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness (1969)
Nozipo Maraire
1966-
Born in Zimbabwe, Maraire studied medicine at Harvard and received her M.D. degree in 1992. She has recently completed a neurosurgical residency at Yale (only the second woman to have done so since 1925), and plans to return to Zimbabwe to practice (as the first black female neurosurgeon in Africa). Zenzele has been translated into 13 languages.
Background
Shufro C. The many worlds of Nozipo Maraire. Yale Medicine. 1999Fiction
Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter (1996)
Jean-Paul Marat
1743-1793
Marat's medical training is unknown to me, but he was practicing medicine in London in the 1770's. In 1777 he became physician to the personal guards of the Comte d'Artois, brother of Louis XVI. For several years he practiced medicine, performed scientific experiments and published papers on his findings, until he became more and more involved in politics as a leader of the radical Montagnard faction during the progress of the French Revolution. His assasination in a medicinal bath was memorialized in Jacques-Louis David's 1793 painting, The Death of Marat; and dramatised by Peter Weiss in his1983 The Persecution and Assasination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. I have not so far located modern editions of Marat's famous essays.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Gottschalk LR. Jean Paul Marat; A Study in Radicalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1967.NonFiction
Essay on the Human Soul (1771)
A Philosophical Essay on Man (1773)
The Chains of Slavery (1774)
Friedlander P. Writings of Jean Paul Marat, with a Biographical Note. New York: International Publishers; 1927.
Robert W. Marion
1952-
Marion received his M.D. degree in 1979 from Yeshiva University. After further training in pediatrics he became a pediatric geneticist, director of the Center for Congenital Disorders at Montefiore Hospital in New York and Associate Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Like the work of many physician writers, Marion's books are difficult to classify as fiction or nonfiction.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Born Too Soon (1985)
The Boy Who Felt No Pain (1990)NonFiction
The Intern Blues (1989)
Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor (1993)
Rotations: The Twelve Months of Intern Life (1997)
Felix Marti-Ibanez
1912-1972
Born in Spain, Marti-Ibanez received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Madrid in 1931. Initially he practiced psychiatry and also edited several literary and medical journals. During the Spanish Civil War he became Under Secretary of Public Health and Social Services for Republican Spain and represented Spain at the World Peace Conferences, but was forced to leave his homeland at war's end. He became a United States citizen, worked for several pharamceutical houses, began publishing the popular MD magazine in 1950, and was for two years professor of the history of medicine at New York Medical College. Only a few of his many books are listed below.
Background
Aspects of the Life and Work of Felix Marti-Ibanez. MD. July 1972:90-95. Fiction All the Wonders We Seek (1963)
Waltz and Other Stories (1965)NonFiction
The Centaur (1958)
Ariel (1962)
The Crystal Arrow (1964)
The Ship in the Bottle and Other Essays (1967)
Luis Martin-Santos
1924-1964
Martin-Santos graduated with an M.D. degree from the University of Salamanca, and became a psychiatrist and director of the Psychiatric Sanitorium in San Sebastian. In addition to philosophical essays and technical writing in his field, he wrote one novel, concerning a medical student. It was well-received critically and a sequel was partly complete when, tragically, he was killed in an automobile accident.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. Fiction Time of Silence (1964)
Stewart Massad
1958-
Massad received his M.D. degree from Duke University in 1984, then specialized in obstetrics and gynecology, specifically gynecologic oncology. He is an assistant professor at Rush Medical College in Chicago.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Doctors and Other Casualties (1993)
Susan Onthank Mates
1950-
While working as a concert violinist, Mates attended Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, graduating in 1976. After further training in internal medicine and pediatrics, she joined the staff at Brown University, becoming a clinical associate professor of medicine, and has also worked part time as staff physician at the Rhode Island State Tuberculosis Clinic in Providence, Rhode Island. Her short story collection, The Good Doctor, won the Iowa Writers' Workshop John Simmons Short Fiction Award.
Fiction
The Good Doctor (1994)
W. Somerset Maugham
1874-1965
Maugham qualified as a doctor at St. Thomas' medical school in London in 1897. Though he never practiced, his first two novels show the powerful influence of his medical training. He went on to write many popular novels, short stories, plays, and autobiographical works.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Cordell RA. Somerset Maugham, a Writer for All Seasons; a Biographical and Critical Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; 1969.Fiction
Liza of Lambeth (1897)
Of Human Bondage (1915)
The Moon and Sixpence (1919)
Cakes and Ale (1930)
The Razor's Edge (1944)
Complete Short Stories (1951)NonFiction
The Summing Up (1938)
A Writer's Notebook (1949)Drama
Selected Plays of W. Somerset Maugham (1976)
James A. Mays
1939-
A 1965 University of Arkansas Medical Center medical graduate, Mays became a cardiologist and assistant professor of medicine at Charles R. Drew Medical School at the University of Southern California. He is or has been a member of many medical, cultural, and community organizations; and has had prominent roles in a variety of foundations and programs.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Mercy Is King (1975)
Andrew McClintock
1885-1923
McClintock received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1911, and then pursued further study of pathology in Europe. His career as pathologist for the Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, consulting pathologist to the Pittston City Hospital, and attending physician to the State Tuberculosis Dispensary, was cut short in 1919 by an intrabdominal illness, and he died four years later.
Background
Introduction to McClintock AT. Through Old Roads to Cosmic Seas. New York: William Edwin Rudge; 1928.Poetry
Through Old Roads to Cosmic Seas - Poems of a Physician (1928)
John McCrae
1872-1918
McCrae earned an M.B. degree at the University of Toronto in 1898, and did further training there and at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore (as one of William Osler's housestaff). After service in the South African War, he began medical practice in Montreal along with lecturing at McGill University, and medical writing, including A Textbook of Pathology for Students of Medicine (1912). During the first world war he served in Flanders as brigade surgeon of the 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. On May 3, 1915, during a lull in the fighting, and shortly after one of his comrades was mortally wounded, McCrae wrote out the rondeau, "In Flanders Fields." It was published, anonymously, in the December 8 issue of Punch, and has of course been reprinted and recited countless times since. He was subsequently stationed with the McGill unit at No.3 Canadian General Hospital at Boulogne. On January 23, 1918, he fell ill, and on the 28th died of lobar pneumonia complicated by suppurative meningitis.
Background
Prescott JF. In Flanders Fields - The Story of John McCrae. Erin, Ontario: The Boston Mills Press; 1985.Poetry
In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (1919)
Alan Fleming McGlashan
1898-
McGlashan graduated M.R.C.S, L.R.C.P. from St. George's Hospital, London, in 1924; and earned a D.P.M. degree in 1940. He worked briefly as ship's surgeon on a tramp steamer, then as general practitioner before settling into his career as a consulting psychiatrist; and also served in both world wars.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsPoetry
St. George and the Dragon (1931)NonFiction
The Savage and Beautiful Country (1966)
Reuben Merliss
1946-
Merliss graduated with a medical degree from Wayne State University in 1939. He specialized in internal medicine, and was associate clinical professor of medicine at Loma Linda University Medical School.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Year of the Death (1965)
Consider the Season (1968)
Michael J. Meyers
1946-
Meyers graduated from the New Jersey College of Medicine in 1972, and is a family practitioner.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Goodbye, Columbus, Hello, Medicine (1976)
George Milkomane
1903-
Born in Russia, Milkomane became a British citizen in 1938. He studied medicine in a variety of European institutions, receiving the F.R.C.S. degree from the Royal College of Surgeons. Although he practiced plastic surgery, and was a member of the International College of Surgeons, he must have devoted most of his time to the writing, under a variety of pseudonyms, of his over one hundred and twenty books. Only a few are listed below.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Street of a Thousand Misters (1939)
Bastard Angels (1942)
The President Died at Noon (1945)
Pillar of Fire (1948)
Beloved Nemesis (1971)NonFiction
The Healing Knife: A Surgeon's Destiny (1938)
A Ring at the Door: Personal Experiences (1940)
One Russian's Story (1970)
Benjamin Frank Miller
1907-1971
After training in chemical engineering, Miller attended Harvard Medical School, from which he graduated in 1932. He pursued medical research, except when illness (sarcoidosis) interfered, worked for the Public Health Service, and published a very popular medical book for the layman, Complete Medical Guide.
Background
Altschule MD. Introduction to Poems: Partly Medical. Boston: The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine; 1978.Poetry
Poems: Partly Medical (1978)
Jonathan Miller
1934-
Miller graduated M.B., B.Ch. from Cambridge in 1959. For two years he worked as a neurologist in London, but in 1960 joined Peter Cook, Alan Bennet, and Dudley Moore to create the successful "Beyond the Fringe" comedy revue. Since then he has been involved with theatrical, radio, and television productions as actor, director, producer, or writer; and received many awards for his work.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Romain M. A Profile of Jonathan Miller. Cambridge University; 1991.Drama (Television)
The Anne Hutchinson Story (1965)
Alice in Wonderland (1966)
Timothy Miller
1938-
A 1963 graduate of University of California Los Angeles Medical School, Miller did further training in surgery and became a plastic surgeon, practicing in Los Angeles. He is chief of plastic surgery at Wadsworth Veterans Medical Center.
Background
Dust jacket of Practice to DeceiveFiction
Practice to Deceive (1991)
John Kearsley Mitchell
1798-1858
Mitchell, the father of Silas Weir Mitchell, studied in Scotland, where he knew Sir Walter Scott; and graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1819. He worked initially as a ship's surgeon, then opened a medical practice in Philadelphia, becoming Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College.
Background
McDonough ML. Poet-Physicians: An Anthology of Medical Poetry Written by Physicians. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas; 1945.Poetry
Indecision, a tale of the far West; and other poems (1839)
Silas Weir Mitchell
1829-1914
Mitchell, the son of John Kearsley Mitchell, earned his M.D. degree in 1850 from Jefferson Medical College. After a year of neurologic study in Paris (with, among others, Claude Bernard), he embarked on a medical career, interrupted by medical service in the Civil War, which included practice, research, and publication of many papers and books in the nascent fields of neurology and psychiatry. He is especially remembered for his "rest cure" for neurosis, use of snake venom for analgesia, and contributions to our understanding of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. In addition, he authored a long list of novels, stories, and poems, only some of which are listed below.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Burr AR. Weir Mitchell, His Life and Letters. New York: Duffield & Company; 1929.
Earnest E. S. Weir Mitchell - Novelist and Physician. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; 1950Fiction
Roland Blake (1886)
Hugh Wynne (1898)
The Adventures of Francois (1898)
Circumstance (1901)
Constance Trescott (1905)
The Red City (1908) Poetry Selections from the Poems of S. Weir Mitchell (1901)
Amitabh Mitra
1955-
Born in India, Mitra received his bachelor degree in medicine and surgery from the G.R. Medical College affiliated with the Jiwaji University in Gwalior, India, in 1979. He took further training in orthopedic surgery, aerospace medicine, and family medicine; and currently serves as the Chief Medical Officer of the Department of Health in Eastern Cape, and practices emergency medicine and orthopedics in East London, South Africa. In addition to the volume listed below, he has published poetry on the web, and expects his next book of poems, A Slow Train to Gwalior, to be published this year.
Poetry
Ritual Silences (1980)
Taghi Modarressi
1931-
Modarressi was born in Iran, graduated with an M.D. degree from the University of Teheran in 1959, did further training in psychiatry at Duke University and McGill University, and became a United States citizen in 1977. He practices psychiatry, and is an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland. Married to the writer Ann Tyler, he has written several novels, in Persian or in English.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Book of Absent People (1986)
The Pilgrim's Rules of Etiquette (1989)
David Macbeth Moir
1798-1851
Moir was apprenticed to a local surgeon at the age of thirteen, then studied at the University of Edinburgh where he received his surgeon's diploma in 1916. He practiced medicine for years in his home town of Musselburgh, all the while contributing poetry and fiction to Blackwood's Magazine, as well as writing medical treatises.
Background
Monro TK. The Physician as Man of Letters, Science and Action. Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone Limited; 1951.
Stephen L, Lee S, eds. The Dictionary of National Biography, vol 13. Oxford University Press; 1917.Poetry
The Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moir (1852)Fiction
The Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith, Written by Himself (?1839)
David Monger
1908-1972
Monger graduated M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., from University of London (Charing Cross Hospital) in 1931. He ran a general practice in South Wales, and, in addition, was the first president of the Guild of Welsh Playwrights. As a playwright he wrote in both English and Welsh, and contributed several radio plays to the BBC.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Story (?title) in Jones G, Ellis IF. Classic Welsh Short Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1992.Drama
A Bride in Samaria, in New Plays Quarterly (1947)
Can Rhiannon (1947)
First Wife's Choice, in New Plays Quarterly (1948)
Mother of Solomon (1949)NonFiction
Goodbye, Doctor, Goodbye (1963)
David Moolten
1961-
A 1987 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Moolten was certified in pathology in 1991, and works for the American Red Cross. He has received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship Grant in Literature, and his Plums and Ashes collection won the 1994 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize.
Poetry
Plums and Ashes (1994)
Merrill Moore
1903-1957
Moore earned his M.D. degree at Vanderbilt University in 1928, did further training in neurology and psychiatry and practiced the latter in Boston. Among his patients were the poet Robert Lowell, and Moore's fellow physician writer William Carlos Williams. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in the Pacific during World War II. As an undergraduate at Vanderbilt, Moore had been a member, along with John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren, of the "Fugitive" poets of the Southern Literary Renaissance. Said to be the most prolific sonneteer ever, he wrote over forty thousand sonnets during his relatively short life, storing them in an annex dubbed the Sonnetorium. Obviously, only a fraction were published, and only a fraction of those are included in the selections below.
Background
Wells HW. Poet and Psychiatrist - Merrill Moore, M.D. New York: Twayne Publishers; 1955Poetry
The Noise That Time Makes (1929)
Six Sides to a Man (1935)
M - One Thousand Autobiographical Sonnets (1938)
Clinical Sonnets (1949)
Poems of American Life (1958)
Mori Rintaro
1862-1922
After medical studies in Japan and Germany, graduating in 1888, Mori worked as a physician in the Japanese Imperial Army. He then turned to writing, producing novels, plays, and translations of European, especially German, works into Japanese.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Fiction
The Dancing Girl (1907)
The Wild Geese (1959)
The Historical Literature of Mori Ogai (1977)
The Historical Fiction of Mori Ogai (1991)
Youth and Other Stories (1994)
J. K.W. Morrice
1924-
Morrice graduated from the University of Aberdeen M.B., Ch.B.in 1946, and from the University of London M.D. in 1954. A practicing psychiatrist and psychotherapist, he is a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and also a member of the Scottish Poetry Society. He writes his poetry in Scots as well as English.
Background
Contemporary Authors Poetry Prototype (1965)
Relations (1979)
For All I Know (1981)
Twal Mile Roon (1985)
When Truth Is Known (1986)
The Scampering Marmoset (1990)
Thomas P. Mulkeen
1923-
Mulkeen graduated from Long Island College of Medicine in 1948. After residency in surgery he practiced surgery, then joined the office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York City.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Honor Thy Godfather (1973)
My Killer Doesn't Understand Me (1973)
Axel Munthe
1857-1949
Munthe studied medicine in Uppsala, Montpellier, and Paris (where he was a student of Charcot), graduating M.D. in 1880. In 1908 he became physician-in-ordinary to the Swedish royal family, and during the First World War served with a British unit of the Red Cross in France. The distinction between fiction and nonfiction in his writing is often difficult.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Munthe G, Uexkull G. The Story of Axel Munthe. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.;1953.Fiction
Red Cross and Iron Cross (1916)NonFiction
Letters from a Mourning City (1887)
Memories and Vagaries (1898)
The Story of San Michele (1929)
Arthur Lister Murphy
1906-
Murphy graduated with an M.D. degree from Dalhousie University in 1930. He practiced surgery, and was an associate professor of surgery at his alma mater. In addition to his surgical work and service as governor of the American College of Surgeons; he was a director of the National Theater School, and contributed a number of scripts to the Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey television shows in the 1960's. In 1962 he received the Canadian Drama Award. Unfortunately, only one of his plays has been published.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsDrama
The First Falls on Monday (1972)
John Murray
1962-
After receiving his MD degree from Johns Hopkins, Murray became an epidemiologist, joining the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service in 1992. He attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Joyce Carol Oats selected his story “The Hill Station” for inclusion in Best New American Voices of 2002.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Fiction
A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies (2003)
