Biographical Information on Physician Writers
N-S
Taslima Nasrin
1962-
Nasrin received Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees from Mymensingh Medical College (Bangladesh) in 1984. Working as a gynecologist and anesthesiologist in Dhaka hospitals, she became increasingly aware of and vocal about the status of women in Bengali society. As a result of her writing, political and religious authorities denounced her, ultimately calling for her arrest and execution for blasphemy. With the help of PEN, Amnesty International, and the European Union, she was given asylum in Sweden in 1994. She continues to write fiction, poetry, and articles; and has been awarded the Sakharov prize for Freedom of Thought by the Parliament of the European Union.
Background
http://www.secularislam.org/taslima.htmlFiction
Shame (1997)Poetry
Light up at Midnight: Selected Poems (1992)
The Game in Reverse (1995)
100 Poems of Taslima Nasreen (1997)
Laura Walther Nathanson
1941-
After graduation from Tufts University with an M.D. degree in 1970, Nathanson became a pediatrician, practicing in California.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Trouble with Wednesdays (1986)
Laszlo Nemeth
1901-1975
Nemeth received his M.D. degree from the Semmelweis University of Medicine (Hungary) in 1925, and practiced medicine from then until 1943. In addition, he founded the periodical Tanu ("Witness"), translated classic English and Russian works, and wrote many stories, novels, and plays, few of which have been translated into English. As a force in the folk-writers movement, and proponent of Hungarianism, he was prohibited from publishing during the Stalinist period.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Guilt (1966)
Revulsion (1966)
Josef Nesvadba
1926-
A 1950 Charles University (Prague) M.D. graduate, Nesvadba became a psychiatrist. In addition to science fiction, he has written several screenplays, "fantasy being for me a way of diagnosis for contemporary problems and trends."
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Vampires Limited: Stories of Science and Fantasy (1964)
In the Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman: Stories of Science and Fantasy (1970)
Agostinho Neto
1922-1979
After studying medicine in Lisbon, where he was arrested for his political activities, Neto returned to Angola, his homeland, to practice. In 1960 he was arrested there because of his resistance to colonial authorities. He was imprisoned and exiled, elected president of the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola) in 1962, and the first president of the People's Republic of Angola in 1975. Though a Marxist, Neto was also concerned about the preservation of indiginous Angolan culture. His poetry was published in a variety of reviews, and anthologized. Following his death in Moscow, the prominent Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe eulogized him:
...I will celebrate
The man who rode a trinity
Of awesome fates to the cause
Of our trampled race!
Thou Healer, Soldier and Poet!
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed.Poetry
Sacred Hope: Poems (1986)
Fredric Neuman
1934-
Neuman earned his M.D. degree at New York University, graduating in 1959. He did further training in psychiatry, served as assistant chief of neuropsychiatry with the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Nuremberg, West Germany, and has practiced and held various administrative positions in the New York area.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Seclusion Room (1978)
Manoeuvres (1983)
H.L. Newbold
1921-
Newbold graduated with an M.D. degree from Duke University in 1945, and went on to practice internal medicine and psychiatry. He has also, apparently, written novels under a pen name, unknown to me.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
1/3 of an Inch of French Bread (1961)
Long John (1979)
Dr. Cox's Couch (1979)
Abioseh Nicol
1924-
Nicol graduated M.B., B.Chir., 1951, M.D. 1956, and Ph.D. 1958 from Cambridge University; and was the first African, at either Cambridge or Oxford, to become a fellow of his college (Christ's College). In addition to medical research and writing, notably on malnutrition, anemia, and the structure of insulin; he has served as principal of Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone, vice chancellor of the University of Sierra Leone, ambassador to the United Nations, and executive director of the United Nations Institue for Training and Research. His creative writing has been well received and anthologized.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Fiction
Two African Tales (1965)
The Truly Married Woman, and Other Stories (1965)NonFiction
Africa, a Subjective View (1964)
Creative Women in Changing Societies (1982)
Max Nordau
1849-1923
After some medical training yet unknown to me, Nordau settled in Paris, practiced medicine, and was actively involved in the Zionist congresses. In addition, he was, like his friend and fellow physician Pio Baroja, a prolific writer.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.NonFiction
The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization (1884)
Degeneration (1993)Drama
The Shackles of Fate (1897)
A Question of Honor; A Tragedy of the Present Day (1907)Fiction
How Women Love, and Other Tales (1896)
The Dwarf's Spectacles, and Other Fairy Tales (1905)
Robert A. Norman
1955-
Norman graduated from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1981, and, after further training, began a dermatology practice. He has taught creative writing for ten years, and received a fellowship to teach creative writing to senior citizens. His writing includes medical articles in the lay and medical press, as well as fiction and poetry and a screenplay; and he was recently selected for the national poetry project by poet laureate Robert Pinsky. Only two of his seventeen published books are listed.
Background
http://www.angelfire.com/me/skindoc/index.htmlFiction
Gaspar Returns (1997)NonFiction
I Can't Wait until Tomorrow (2000)
Alan E. Nourse
1928-1992
After graduating with an M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955, and interning, Nourse worked as a general practitioner in North Bend, Washington, until 1964, when he devoted himself full time to writing. Only a few of his many books are listed below, his well-known Intern being grouped with Fiction in keeping with Nourse's observation in its introduction that, "the journal that follows must technically be classified as fiction." The relation of Nourse's Blade Runner to the famous 1982 film of the same name is apparently only slight. Though William S. Burroughs wrote a screenplay (Blade Runner: A Movie) in 1979 loosely based on Nourse's novel, but never produced; the film was inspired by Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Both Nourse's novel and the film deal with futuristic police states, but the film uses only the title of Nourse's book.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. VIII: Twentieth Century American Science Fiction Writers. Gale; 1981.Fiction
Trouble on Titan (1954)
A Man Obsessed (1954)
Rocket to Limbo (1957)
Star Surgeon (1960)
Tiger by the Tail and Other Science Fiction Stories (1960)
Intern (1965)
Psi High and Others (1967)
The Bladerunner (1974)
The Practice (1978)
The Fourth Horseman (1983)
Sherwin B. Nuland
1930-
A 1955 Yale University School of Medicine graduate, Nuland did further training in general and thoracic surgery. In addition to his practice of surgery, he is a clinical professor of surgery at Yale (a colleague of Richard Selzer when Selzer was there), and teaches the history of medicine. His writing, though some would classify it as "medical," transends that restriction, witness the facts that How We Die was on the New York Times best seller list for thirty four weeks, and won a National Book Award. Nuland also contributes to a variety of periodicals, including The New Yorker and National Geographic.
NonFiction
Doctors: The Biography of Medicine (1989)
How We Die (1993 )
Introduction to The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams (1996)
The Wisdom of the Body (1997)
How We Live (1998)
The Mysteries within: Sad Spleens, Happy Hearts, and Other Myths of the Body (2000 - not yet released)
William Ober
1920-1993
Ober graduated M.D. from Boston Univesity School of Medicine in 1946, and did further training in pathology. His varied career in pathology included assisting at the autopsy of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, and reading the slides from one of Roosevelt's skin biopsies; and serving as director of the Department of Pathology at Hackensack Medical Center and clinical professor of pathology at New Jersey Medical College.
Background
Hipp JW, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1993. Detroit: Gale Press; 1994NonFiction
Boswell's Clap and Other Essays: Medical Analyses of Literary Men's Afflictions (1979)
Bottoms up! A Pathologist's Essays on Medicine and the Humanities (1988)
Avodah Komito Offit
1931-
Offit received her M.D. degree from New York University in 1967, did further training at Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York City, and practiced psychiatry, specializing in problems of sexuality. She was on the staff at Cornell University School of Medicine. In 1961 she won a Bread Loaf writing scholarship. Although her writing could be categorized as professional, she has been described as "the Montaigne of human sexuality" (Maggie Scarf in New Republic review of Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist).
Background
Contemporary AuthorsNonFiction
Night Thoughts: Reflections of a Sex Therapist. (1981)
Ofri, Danielle
?-
Internist Ofri received her MD degree from New York University School of Medicine.in 1993. In addition to her clinical work as attending physician at Bellevue Hospital and assistant professor of medicine at NYUSM, she is co-founder of the Bellevue Literary Review. Her essays have been anthologized in Best American Essays 2002 and Best American Science Writing 2003.
Background
Wikipedia
http://www.danielleofri.com/
Nonfiction
Singular Intimacies (2003)
Incidental Findings: Lessons from My Patients in the Art of Medicine (2005)
Olivella, Manuel Zapata
1920-
Olivella received his MD degree from National University, Bogota, Colombia, in 1948. He worked as a general practitioner and psychiatrist, and served as visiting professor at several American universities. Among his many contributions was the founding of the literary periodical Letras nacionales.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Antonio Tillis, Manuel Zapata Olivella and the “Darkening” of Latin American Literature (2005)
Fiction
Tierra mojada (1947)
Pasión vagabunda (1949)
He visto la noche (1953)
La Calle 10 (1960)
En Chimá nace un santo (1963)
Las claves mágicas de América (1989)
Chambacu, Black Slum (1989)
Hemingway, el cazador de la muerte (1993)
Drama
Hotel de Vagabundos (1955)
Lawrence E. Okun
1929-
Okun graduated M.D. from the University of Michigan in 1958 and, after specialty training, began practice as an obstetrician-gynecologist.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
On the Eighth Day (1980)
Howard A. Olgin
1939-
Olgin, a 1965 medical graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, practices plastic surgery in the Los Angeles area. In addition to the novels below, he has written a number of short stories.
Fiction
The Doctor Game (published in England as Autopsy!) (1978)
Lifebank (1995)
Remote Intrusion (1996)
The Eternity Cure (1997)
John O'Neill
1956-
O'Neill graduated from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1982. After further training at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center, he began a dermatology practice.
Fiction
Baby Girl Lauren (1991)
How could he have known? Short story in Mediphors. 1994; 4: 23-25.
Sir William Osler
1849-1920
Trained at Toronto Medical School and McGill University, from which he graduated M.D. in 1872, Osler did further study in England and Europe. His illustrious subsequent career involved, among many other things, research (description of blood platelets, Osler nodes, Rendu-Osler-Weber disease), practice, professorships at McGill and Johns Hopkins, where he made fundamental and lasting changes in the teaching of clinical medicine, the writing of many papers and his classic textbook, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, occupancy of the Regius Chair of Medicine at Oxford, and assembly of his library, Bibliotheca Osleriana. His pertinence to the current list of physician writers is his literary style, and his own interest, evident in many of his addresses and essays, in physician writers. His example has inspired a number of "Osler societies," including the American Osler Society (http://staffweb.lib.uiowa.edu/deimas/AmOslerSoc/).
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Cushing HW. The Life of Sir William Osler (1925)
Nation EF, Roland CG, McGovern JP. An Annotated Checklist of Osleriana. The Kent State University Press (1976)
Bliss M. William Osler: A Life in Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press; 1999NonFiction
Keynes GL, ed. Selected Writings, 12 July 1849 to 20 December 1919. London: Oxford University Press; 1951.
McGovern JP, Roland CG. The Collected Essays of Sir William Osler (3 vol.). Birmingham (Classics of Medicine); 1985.
Gordon Ostlere
1921-
Ostlere graduated M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. from London in 1945, and M.B., B. Chir. from Cambridge in 1946. He subsequently worked briefly as a ship's surgeon, then as a research assistant at Oxford, before devoting himself full time to writing. His comic novel Doctor in the House was made into a successful 1954 film and later radio and television series, and was followed by a string of "Doctor in..." novels (some of which were also made into films), in addition to other serious as well as humorous works too numerous to list below.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Doctor in the House (1952)
Doctor at Sea (1950)
Doctor and Son (1959)
Witness for the Crown (1971)
The Sleep of Life: A Novel (1975)
Jack the Ripper (1980)NonFiction
The Literary Companion to Medicine (1996)
Ferdie Pacheco
1927-
Pacheco received his M.D. degree from the University of Miami, Florida, in 1958, and went into general practice. His interest in professional boxing led him to become the physician to a number of famous boxers, including Muhammed Ali.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsNonFiction
Fight Doctor (1977)
Ybor City Chronicles (1994)
John Ransom Palmer
1905-1948
After graduating from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1936, Palmer practiced medicine in New York City, then became a Major in the Army Medical Corps. His subsequent activities are still unknown to me.
Background
McDonough ML. Poet-Physicians: An Anthology of Medical Poetry Written by Physicians. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas; 1945.Poetry
Winds of Dawn (1927)
51 Poems by Robert Goldsborough (1937)
Midstream - Midnight (1938)
Where Every Prospect Pleases (1939)
War: 1939 (1940)
Micahel Palmer
1942-
A 1968 medical graduate of Case Western Reserve University, Palmer did further training in internal medicine, practiced that specialty for several years, then became an emergency room physician in Massachusetts. Most recently he has worked in the substance abuse field. Many of his novels have been on the New York Times best sellers list, and at least one - Extreme Measures - has been made into a motion picture.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Sisterhood (1984)
Side Effects (1985)
Flashback (1988)
Extreme Measures (1991)
Natural Causes (1994)
Silent Treatment (1996)
Critical Judgment (1998)
Miracle Cure (1998)
Tratamiento Criminal (1999)
Philippe Panneton
Pseudonym Ringuet
1895-1960
Panneton obtained his MD degree from the University of Montreal in 1920 and did further study in Paris before returning to Montreal to join the medical faculty there. He addition to his practice and his writing, he served as ambassador to Portugal 1956060, and was co-founder of the Academie Canadienne-Francaise.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Trente Arpents (“Thirty Acres”) (1938)
L’Heritage et autres contes (1946)
Fausse Monnaie (“Counterfeit”) (1947)Drama
Je t’aime…Je ne t’aime pas (1927)
Nonfiction
Confidences (autobiography) (1965)
Elias Papadimitrakopoulos
1930-
After training yet unknown to me, Papadimitrakopoulos worked as a military physician with the Greek Army until he retired in 1983. He has been on the editorial staff of the literary journal Hartis, and regularly contributes stories to literary magazines. Little of his work, unfortunately, has been translated into English.
Fiction
The Hernia Operation, short story in Literature and Medicine. 1989; 8: 122-127. Toothpaste with Chlorophyll/Maritime Hot Baths (1992)
John A. Parrish
1939-
Parrish graduated from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1965, did a year of internal medicine training, and then served in the Marine Corps in Viet Nam from 1967 through 1968. For actions there he was awarded the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Gold. Subsequently, he completed a dermatology residency, and practices in Boston where he is an associate professor at Harvard. In addition to several books in his field of photomedicine, he has written the memoir, listed below, of his Viet Nam experience. Though "factual" works I have generally excluded from this list, 12, 20 & 5 reads like a novel, and I couldn't leave it out. Also, it suggests comparison to Glasser's 365 Days, published the year before.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsNonFiction
12, 20 & 5 - A Doctor's Year in Vietnam (1972)
James S. Peacocke
?
Little information so far.
Fiction
The Orphan Girls (18--)
M. Scott Peck
1936-
Peck graduated from Case Western Reserve University with an M.D. degree in 1963. After nine years in the army, in training and in psychiatric practice, he opened a private psychiatric practice in Connecticut. His writing includes popular books on spirituality, including The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth, which was on the New York Times best seller list for over six years.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
A Bed by the Window (1990)
Wilder Penfield
1891-1976
After studying at Princeton, and at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, Penfield went to Johns Hopkins University where he received an M.D. degree in 1918. He pursued further study in neurology, and practiced neurosurgery in New York, before becoming professor and chairman of the department of neurology and neurosurgery at McGill University in Montreal. In 1934 he founded and began directing the Montreal Neurological Institute, work which was interrupted by his service in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps during World War II. Member, fellow, director or honoree of countless societies, associations, and boards, he wrote prolifically on neurologic and neurosurgical topics, making seminal contributions to the study of epilepsy and brain organization, among other things, while somehow finding time for fiction as well.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
No Other Gods (1954)
The Torch (1960)NonFiction
The Second Career (1963)
The Difficult Art of Giving: The Epic of Alan Gregg (1967)
No Man Alone - A Neurosurgeon's Life (1977)
John Penman
1913-
A neurologist, Penman graduated from Oxford M.B., B.S in 1944. He received M.R.C.P. in 1948, and F.R.C.P. in 1969. His interest and talents in the classics are shown by the translation listed below.
Background
Lowbury E. Apollo: An Anthology of Poems by Doctor Poets. London: Keynes Press; 1990.Poetry
A Late Harvest (1987)Translation
The Epodes of Horace - A New English Version (1980)
James Gates Percival
1795-1856
Percival graduated from the Medical Institution of Yale College in 1820. His medical career, however, was fitful, including some practice and service as surgeon in the Boston recruiting office. He also worked at times as a geologist, and was a gifted linguist, translating from a variety of languages, and assisting Noah Webster in the preparation of An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Due to paranoia and mental instability he resided for awhile in the New Haven State Hospital, calling to mind the tragic life of W.C. Minor, M.D. who contributed to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, and whose story is told in Simon Winchester's biography, The Surgeon of Crowthorne (London: Viking; 1998).
Background
Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons; 1935Poetry
The Poetical Works of James Gates Percival, with a Biographical Sketch (1859)
Walker Percy
1916-1990
Percy graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1941, but fell ill with tuberculosis during his internship, was confined to the Trudeau Sanitorium in New York State for two years, and never practiced medicine thereafter. His The Moviegoer received the 1962 National Book Award (beating out Heller's Catch-22 and Salinger's Franny and Zooey), and the philosophical, linguistic, moral, and spiritual preocupations of his fiction and nonfiction continue to intrigue not only those within, but those outside the literature and medicine field.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Lawson LA, Kramer VA, ed. Conversations with Walker Percy. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi; 1985
Hobson LW. Walker Percy: A Comprehensive Descriptive Bibliography. New Orleans: Faust Publishing Company; 1988
Tolson J. Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. New York: Simon & Schuster; 1992
Samway PH. Walker Percy: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1997
The Walker Percy ProjectFiction
The Moviegoer (1961)
The Last Gentleman (1966)
Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time near the End of the World (1971)
Lancelot (1977)
The Second Coming (1980)
The Thanatos Syndrome (1987)NonFiction
The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (1975)
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)
Novel-Writing in an Apocalyptic Time (1986)
Sign-Posts in a Strange Land (1991)
Grace Perry
1927-1987
Perry graduated M.B. and B.S. from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1950. Along with a medical career involving general practice and pediatrics, and raising sheep, she was intimately involved with poetry in her native country, not only writing, but founding and editing the journal Poetry Australia, organizing conferences, and publishing new poets at her South Head Press.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsPoetry
I Am the Song You Sing and Other Poems (1944)
Red Scarf (1964)
Frozen Section (1967)
Two Houses: Poems 66-69 (1969)
Black Swans at Berrima (1972)
Berrima Winter (1974)
Journal of a Surgeon's Wife and Other Poems (1975)
Snow in Winter (1980)
Be Kind to Animals (1984)
Lenrie Peters
1932-
Born in The Gambia, Peters studied medicine in England, graduating from Cambridge with Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees in 1959. He is a fellow of both the West African College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons in England, and, in addition to a surgical practice in Banjul, has held leadership positions in a variety of cultural and educational organizations. In 1996 he served as judge in the Commonwealth Writers Prize competition.
Background
Vinson J, ed. Contemporary Poets, 3rd ed. New York: St Martin's Press; 1980Poetry
Poems (1964)
Satellites (1967)
Katchikali (1971)
Selected Poetry (1981)Fiction
The Second Round (1965)
Steve Piecznik
1943-
Pieczenik graduated from Cornell University Medical College with an M.D. degree in 1968, did further training in psychiatry, then earned a Ph.D. in international relations from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, hostage negotiator, and consultant to a variety of organizations. Among his other writing, he was worked with Tom Clancy on the Op Center television show and novels.
Fiction
The Mind Palace (1985)
Blood Heat (1988)
Maximum Vigilance (1993)
Pax Pacifica (1995)
State of Emergency (1999)
Ronald Pies
1952-
Pies graduated from State University of New York at Syracuse with an M.D. degree in 1978. After a psychiatric residency, he opened a psychiatric practice, and is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts Medical School.
Poetry
Lean Soil (1985)
Riding down Dark (1992)
J.W. Polidori
1795-1821
Polidori, an exact (by year) contemporary of Keats, graduated with an M.D. degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1815, at the age of nineteen. For awhile he served as Lord Byron's secretary and physician (see Paul West's fictional Lord Byron's Doctor. Doubleday; 1989), then practiced in Norwich and moved to London, where he died at a young age, and it is said by his own hand. His gothic story, The Vampyre, written in 1819, the year after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and seventy eight years before Bram Stoker's Dracula; has inspired both operas and plays, and continues in print.
Background
Monro TK. The Physician as Man of Letters, Science and Action. Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone Limited; 1951.Fiction
MacDonald DL, Scherf K, ed. The Vampyre; and, Ernestus Berchtold, or, The Modern Oedipus: Collected Fiction of John William Polidori. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; 1993NonFiction
Rossetti WM, ed. The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816, relating to Byron, Shelley, etc. Norwood, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions; 1978.
William Pomidor
1962-
Although Pomidor received a medical degree in1986 from Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (co-home with Hiram College of the Center for Literature, Medicine, and the Healthcare Professions), he left clinical medicine part-way through a Family Practice residency. In addition to his writing, he is involved in medically-related video game design and teaching medical humanities as adjunct assistant professor at Florida State University College of Medicine.
Background
Personal communication
Fiction
Murder by Prescription (1995)
Anatomy of a Murder (1996)
Mind over Murder (1998)
Ten Little Medicine Men (1998)
Skeletons in the Closet (1997)
Craig Powell
1940-
Qualified B. Med, B. Surg. from the University of Sydney in 1965, Powell did further study in psychiatry, and has practiced in Canada as well as his native Australia. Of interest is his observation quoted in Contemporary Authors:
...psychotherapy, when it is well done, has some of the qualities of Poetry it proceeds by feeling and intuition rather than strict logic, and tries to form linkages between elements that previously did not seem to belong together.
Powell's early work was published by Grace Perry's South Head Press, and he is an admirer of psychiatrist poet Merrill Moore.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsPoetry
A Different Kind of Breathing (1966)
I Learn by Going (1968)
A Country without Exiles (1972)
Selected Poems 1963-1977 (1977)
Rehearsal for Dancers (1978)
Minga Street: New & Selected Poems (1993)
Francois Rabelais
1483-1553
One of the first and most famous physician writers, Rabelais studied law and became a Franciscan novice before studying medicine at Montpellier. He was appointed physician to the hospital in Lyon in 1532, and in 1537 received his doctorate from Montpellier. His ribald, "heretical" works, placed on the "Index of Forbidden Books" for a time, have influenced many writers ever since.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Frame DM. Francois Rabelais - A Study. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1977.Fiction
Cohen JM, trans. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books; 1955
Neil Ravin
1947-
Ravin graduated from Cornell University with an M.D. degree in 1973. After further training in medicine and endocrinology, he began practice in Washington, D.C.
Background
Contemporary Authors Fiction M.D. (1981)
Informed Consent (1983)
Seven North (1985)
Evidence (1987)
Mere Mortals (1989)
Francesco Redi
1626-1697
Redi studied science and medicine in Pisa, and was appointed personal physician to the Dukes of Tuscany. Scientifically, he is most remembered for his demonstration, by one of the first controlled biological experiments, that maggots arise from something transmitted through the air, and not spontaneously.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Poetry
Bacchus in Tuscany (1825)
B.P. Reiter
1945-
Reiter received his M.D. degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1970. After further training in radiology, he began practice at several New York area hospitals. In 1975, Reiter was a prizewinner in a New York magazine writing competition.
Fiction
The Saturday Night Knife and Gun Club (1977)
Jean Reverzy
1914-1959
Graduating in medicine in 1940 in Lyon, Reverzy worked in the Resistance until he was arrested by the Germans. He was freed in 1943 and pursued a general medicine practice in Lyon, interrupted by periodic travels through Europe and the Middle and Far East. Le Passage received the Prix Renaudot.
Background
http://www.ammppu.org/litterature/reverzy.htm
Fiction
Le Passage (1954)
Place des Angoisses (1956)
Le Corridor (1958)
Oeuvres complètes (2002)
Nonfiction
A la recherche d’un miroir (1961)
Jose Rizal
1861-1896
The Philippine patriot Rizal received his medical training in Madrid, Paris, and Heidelberg. In addition to his practice of ophthalmology (including important work in cataract surgery), he became actively involved in the nonviolent reform movement, trying to free the Philippines from control by Franciscan and other friars. Eventually, he was imprisoned and executed, composing, on the eve of his execution, "Last Farewell," a "masterpiece of 19th-century Spanish verse" (Encyclopedia Britannica). A painting of Rizal treating his mother is on the cover of the June 27, 1990, issue of JAMA.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Fiction
An Eagle Flight - a Filipino Novel (1900)
The Social Cancer (1912)
The Lost Eden (1971)
The Reign of Greed (1972)
Miscellaneous Writings of Jose Rizal (1992)
Rizal's Prose (1995)Letters
Rizal's Correspondence with Fellow Reformists (1992)
Adolfo Rocha
Pseudonym Miguel Torga
1907-1995
Prior to entering the School of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Rocha worked on the literary magazine Presença. He received his MD degree in 1933, and in spite of his prolific literary output, spent his professional life as a city physician, clashing often with the Salazar regime. His many awards included the Montaigne Literary Prize, the PortugueseVida Literaria, and the Ecureul Prize from the Bordeaux Book Fair.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Wikipedia
Poetry
O outro livro de Job ("The Other Book of Job") (1944)
Poemas ibericos ("Iberian Poems") (1965)
Fiction
Vindima ("Vintage") (1945)
Bichos (“Farrusco the Blackbird and Other Stories”) (1951)
Nonfiction
Diarios ("Diaries") (1941- )
Francis Roe
1932-
Roe graduated M.B., Ch.B. from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1955. After further training in surgery, he began a career of practice and research, mainly in the United States, and has been on the teaching staff at Yale. In addition to works in the cancer field, he has written the books below, and may have written the "Dr. Jean Montrose mysteries," though I have yet to document that.
Fiction
Doctors and Doctors' Wives (1989)
Intensive Care (1991)
Dangerous Practices (1993)
The Surgeon (1994)
Second Opinion (1995)
Under the Knife (1998)
Peter Damien Rogers
1942-
After graduating with an M.D. degree from the University of Tennessee in 1970, Rogers became a pediatrician, on the teaching staffs at Northeast Ohio University Colleges of Medicine and Case Western Reserve Medical School. In 1985 he was a faculty member of New York University's Summer Writers' Conference. I can't tell how much of the book below, dealing apparently with the author's substance abuse, is fiction and how much is nonfiction.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsNonFiction
A Private Practice (1984)
Joao Guimaraes Rosa
1908-1967
Rosa studied medicine at Belo Horizonte, then practiced general medicine in his home town, and as a military doctor, before he joined the Brazilian foreign service. A diplomatic career followed, including service as ambassador. For his innovative fiction, he was elected a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Fiction
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (1963)
Sagarana (1966)
The Third Bank of the River (1968)
Jean Rosenbaum
1927-
A 1954 Wayne State University M.D. graduate, Rosenbaum went on to study psychiatry, though there is an interesting note (which I have yet to verify) in Contemporary Authors that in 1951 he invented the artificial pacemaker. In addition to popular medical writing, he wrote several plays.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsPoetry
Love in a Dying World (1962)
Only the Black at Heart (1965)
Arise Solomon (1965)
Stephen Rosenberg
1941-
Rosenberg graduated from Yeshiva University with an M.D. degree in 1967, and has worked in the public health field. He has held a number of academic positions.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Brenda Maneuver (1982)
Sir Ronald Ross
1857-1932
Perhaps the best example, on this list, of the "renaissance man", Ross qualified M.R.C.S. at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1879, and joined the Indian Medical Service. In 1898, after years of painstaking work in the field, he demonstrated the life cycle of the malarial parasite by identifying plasmodia in the stomachs of Anopheles mosquitoes, work for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902, and was knighted in 1911. In addition, among many other accomplishments, he founded the Ross Institution and Hospital for Tropical Diseases, made contributions in pure and epidemiologic mathematics, and wrote novels, plays, and poetry, the latter praised by no less than John Masefield and Osbert Sitwell. Ross's memorable chiasmus, included in the paper "Science and Poetry" which he read to the Royal Institution June 4,1920, is of interest in this regard: "The poet should begin by being the man of science, and the man of science by being a poet."
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Megroz RL. Ronald Ross - Discoverer & Creator. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd; 1931.Poetry
Poems (1928)
Fables and Satires (1928)Fiction
The Child of Ocean (1889)
The Spirit of Storm (1896)
The Revels of Orsera (1920)NonFiction
Memoirs (1923)
Henry Rowland
1874-1933
After graduating with an M.D. degree from the Yale School of Medicine in 1898, Rowland served as assistant surgeon on a hospital ship, then practiced surgery in New York for several years. Subsequently, he devoted himself to writing and a life of adventure, although he did help treat casualties during World War I in France. Only a few of his many books are listed below.
Background
Malone D. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons; 1935.Fiction
To Windward (1904)
Wanderers (1905)
Closing Net (1912)
Duds (1920)
Hirondelle (1922)
Many Mansions (1932)
Theodore Isaac Rubin
1923-
Rubin received his M.D. degree from the University of Lausanne in 1951, did a psychiatric residency, and subsequently earned a diploma from the American Institute for Psychoanalysis. A prolific writer of fiction and popular nonfiction, he is perhaps best known for his novel Lisa and David, which was made into successful 1962 screen and 1998 television films.
Background
Contemporary Authors Fiction Jordi (1960)
Lisa and David (1961)
Sweet Daddy: The Story of a Pimp (1963)
Platzo and the Mexican Pony Rider (1965)
The 29th Summer (1966)
Cat (1966)
Coming Out (1967)
Miracle at Bellvue (1986)NonFiction
Emergency Room Diary (1972)
Reflections in a Goldfish Tank (1977)
Through My Own Eyes: An Awakened Unconscious (1982)
Jean-Christophe Rufin
1952-
Background sources listed below refer to Rufin’s “medical degree” of about 1977, but nowhere is the granting institution named. He is also a graduate of the Institute d’etudes politiques de Paris. Though he only began fiction writing in 1997, two of his novels (L'Abyssin and Rouge Brésil) have already won the prestigious Prix Goncourt. In addition to his literary achievements, Rufin is a founding member of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and has served as president of Action Against Hunger. In 2007 he was appointed ambassador to Senegal.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Wikipedia
Fiction
L'Abyssin (The Abyssinian) (1997)
Sauver Ispahan (The Siege of Isfahan) (1998)
Les causes perdues (Lost Causes)(1999)
Rouge Brésil (Brazil Red) (2001)
Globalia (2004)
Nonfiction
Le Piège humanitaire (“The Humane Trap”) (1986)
Timothy Rumsey
1948-
After graduating from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1974, Rumsey became board certified in Family Practice and practices in St. Paul.
Background
The Official ABMS Directory of Board Certified Medical Specialists
Fiction
Pictures from a Trip (1985)
Andrew K. Ruotolo
1926-1979
Ruotolo graduated from Cornell University with an M.D. degree in 1948, followed by psychiatric residency and further study at the American Institute for Psychoanalysis. He practiced psychoanalysis in New Jersey until his untimely death.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsNonFiction
Once upon a Murder (1978)
Murder and Other Fairy Tales (1978)
Ronald Ruskin
1944-
Born in Toronta, Ruskin received his MD degree from Queen's University in 1969. After psychiatric studies at McGill, he became a psychoanalyst. In addition to his psychiatric work and writings, he has run a program on literature and psychoanalysis for the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society, published short fiction and poetry in a variety of journals, and published the novel listed below.
Background
http://www.writersunion.ca/r/ruskin.htmFiction
The Last Panic (1979)
Oliver Sacks
1933-
Sacks attended Queen's College, Oxford, from which he graduated B.M., B.Surg. in 1958. In 1960 he received an M.D. degree from Middlesex Hospital, and subsequently emigrated to the United States where he did a neurology residency at the University of California Los Angeles. He eventually became professor of neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, all the while writing the uniquely personal and universal para-neurologic essays for which he has become famous, and because of which he was honored with fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. So allusive and imaginative is his writing that several pieces have inspired dramatic adaptations, for example, Harold Pinter's 1982 play, A Kind of Alaska, and the 1990 Robin Williams/Robert DeNiro film, Awakenings, both based on Sacks' book of that name; and a 1986 opera based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. In 1998 he hosted Time Traveller, a television series on neurologic topics.
Background
Current Biography Yearbook 1985
Contemporary Authors
Oliver Sacks web pageNonFiction
Migraine: The Evolution of a Common Disorder (1970)
Awakenings (1973)
A Leg to Stand on (1984)
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985)
Seeing Voices (1989) An Anthropologist on Mars (1995)
The Island of the Color Blind (1997)
Junichi Saga
1941-
Saga graduated in medicine from Keio University in Japan, and practices medicine in Tsuchiura. He has written several fiction and nonfiction works, only a few of which have so far been translated into English.
Fiction
The Gambler's Tale (1991)NonFiction
Memories of Silk and Straw - A Self-portrait of Small-town Japan (1987)
Confessions of a Yakuza (1995)
Ghulam Husayn Sa'idi
1936-1985
Sa'idi (sometimes spelled Sa'edi) received his M.D.degree in Tabriz, and practiced psychiatry, serving the poorest members of society. His satires became anathema to the Shah's regime, and he was imprisoned, tortured, and exiled at various times in his short life. One of Sa'idi's stories, "The Rubbish Heap" (dealing with hospital corruption, and included in Dandil - Stories from Iranian Life), was made into a film, shown in the United States as The Cycle.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Dandil - Stories from Iranian Life (1981)
Fear and Trembling (1984)Drama
Ghanoonparvar MR, ed. Othello in Wonderland, and Mirror-polishing Storytellers - Two Plays by Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi. Costa Mesa, California: Mazda Publisher; 1996
Mokichi Saito
1882-1953
Saito graduated from the Medical College of Tokyo Imperial University in 1910, did further study of neurology and psychiatry abroad, and returned to his homeland to practice. He was chief surgeon and physician of the Aoyama Brain Hospital in Tokyo.
Background
McDonough ML. Poet-Physicians: An Anthology of Medical Poetry Written by Physicians. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas; 1945.Poetry
Myriad Leaves (1949)
Poems (1975)
Red Lights: Selected Tanka Sequences from Shakko (1989)
Yoshio Sakabe
1924-
Although the details of his medical training are unknown to me, Sakabe carries the M.D. degree, and has worked in a number of Japanese hospitals. He is also active in social organizations such as the YMCA and Rotary International.
Fiction
Night Autopsy Room - Seven Tales of Life, Death, and Hope (1994)
Ferrol Sams
1922-
Born and raised in Fayetteville, Georgia, Sams went to Emory University School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1949. After further training, he returned to his hometown to open a general practice. Sams has written fiction for many years, and must be one of the only physician writers ever honored with a professorship - the Ferrol A. Sams Jr. Distinguished Chair of English at Mercer University (his alma mater), endowed by the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation. In 1991 he began teaching creative writing at Emory University.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Run with the Horsemen (1982)
Whisper of the River (1984)
Widow's Mite & Other Stories (1987)
Passing (1988)
Christmas Gift (1989)
When All the World Was Young (1991)
Epiphany (1995)
T.J. Savage
1855-1929
Savage graduated from the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery in 1877, and specialized in the treatment of alcohol abuse and drug addiction. He ran a sanatorium for years, and published a book on alcoholism.
Background
McDonough ML. Poet-Physicians: An Anthology of Medical Poetry Written by Physicians. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas; 1945.Poetry
The Old Doctor's Vision and Other Poems (1920)
Kate Scannell
1953-
Scannell graduated from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine in 1980, and after further training became board-certified in Internal Medicine, Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, and Geriatrics. She is currently assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The stories in the collection cited were inspired by her work on the AIDS ward of a county hospital.
NonFiction
Death of the Good Doctor - Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic (1999)
Johannes Scheffler
1624-1677
Scheffler studied medicine in Strasbourg and Leyden, and received his medical degree from the University of Padua in 1848. He was appointed court physician to the Duke of Oels. Inspired by reading of the mystics, Scheffler converted to catholicism in 1653 and took the name Angelus Silesius. In 1661, after several more years as physician to Ferdinand III, he became a priest. Many of Scheffler's verses persist today in Protestant as well as Catholic hymns.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Poetry
Franck F, trans. The Book of Angelus Silesius. New York: Vintage Books; 1976.
The Cherubinic Wanderer (1986)
David L. Schiedermayer
1951-
Schiedermayer graduated M.D. from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1981. He did further training in internal medicine, and worked in West Africa and on a Navajo reservation before opening an internal medicine practice in Milwaukee. He is an associate professor and ethics consultant at his alma mater, and has written books on medical ethics.
Poetry
House Calls, Rounds, and Healings (1996)
Friedrich Von Schiller
1759-1805
After starting a study of law, Schiller transferred to the Karls-Schule medical program, graduating in 1780. He began working as an assistant medical officer for a Stuttgart army regiment, but gave up his medical career in 1789 after achieving literary recognition. In his short life he produced poetry, novels, plays, and philosophical works of, to quote the Encyclopedia Britannica entry, "startling relevance to the life of the 20th century." One must agree, on hearing still his "Ode to Joy" at the conclusion of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Passage CE. Friedrich Schiller. New York: F. Ungar Publishing Company; 1975Works
Complete Works of Friedrich Schiller (8 vol.) New York: P.F. Collier & Son; 1902
Werner Felix Schmidt
1923-
A 1950 medical graduate of Stanford University, Schmidt went into general practice in California.
Background
Contemporary Authors Fiction The Forests of Adventure (1963)
L. J. Schneiderman
1932-
After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1957, Schneiderman did further internal medicine training, as well as research in London. He is Professor of Community and Family Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, Medical School, and a contributing editor of Literature and Medicine.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Sea Nymphs by the Hour (1972)
Sequel - short story in Literature and Medicine. 1986; 5: 75-83.NonFiction
Wrong Medicine: Doctors, Patients, and Futile Treatment (1995)
Arthur Schnitzler
1862-1931
Interested in literature all his life - at age nine he wrote a five act tragedy - Schnitzler studied medicine at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1885. He joined his father working at the Allgemeine Wiener Poliklinik, where he was most interested in psychiatric problems, but after about 1895 devoted himself virtually entirely to his writing, of which only a few collections are listed below. That Schnitzler's psychologically intriguing work is of interest to film makers is attested to not only by Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut, based on Rhapsody; but by at least sixteen other films inspired by his novels and plays since 1921.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
My Youth in Vienna. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.;1970Drama
The Green Cockatoo and Other Plays (1913)
Anatol and Other Plays (1917)Fiction
Little Novels (1929)
Viennese Novelettes (1931)
Liese O'Hhalloran Schwarz
1963-
Schwarz took a year off from the University of Virginia School of Medicine to write Near Canaan, and graduated in 1992. Her further training has been in internal medicine.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Near Canaan (1990)
Moacyr Scliar
1937-
Scliar graduated from the University of Rio Grande Do Sul with an M.D. degree in 1962. What his involvement with medicine has been since then, I do not know, but he has written many highly imaginative and well-received novels, and received numerous prizes, including the Guimaraes Rosa prize. Fortunately, many of his books have been translated into English.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Carnival of Animals (1985)
The One-Man Army (1985)
The Centaur in the Garden (1985)
The Gods of Raquel (1986)
The Ballad of the False Messiah (1987)
The Volunteers (1988)
The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes (1988)
Enigmatic Eye (1989)
Max and the Cats (1990)
Collected Stories of Moacyr Scliar (1999)
Andrew M. Seddon
1959-
Born in England, Seddon received his M.D. degree from the University of Maryland in 1985. After a family practice residency, he began practice in Montana. He has written a number of nonfiction pieces, from a Christian perspective, in addition to the novel below.
Fiction
Red Planet Rising (1995)
Victor Segalen
1878-1919
Segalen graduated M.D. from the Naval Medical School in Bordeaux, and worked initially as a ship's doctor, traveling through the Pacific islands, including Tahiti. At various times he was a physician at the Naval Hospital in Brest, and professor at the Imperial Medial College in Tien Tsin, China. He wrote about, and in some cases knew, many of the artists, composers, and writers of his day, including Gauguin, Remy de Gourmont, Huysmans, Rimbaud, and Debussy. His other writing included fiction, poetry, and books on art, anthropology, and archaelogy. Little, unfortunately, has yet to be translated into English.
Background
Arnoux R. Introduction to A Lapse of Memory. Brisbane: Boombana Publications; 1995Fiction
Rene Leys (1974)
A Lapse of Memory (1995)Poetry
Stelae (1969)NonFiction
The Great Statuary of China (1978)
Richard Selzer
1928-
A 1953 graduate of Albany Medical College, Selzer did further surgical training at Yale before beginning a surgical practice there. He rose to the position of Professor of Surgery, and in addition has taught writing at Yale, been a Fellow at Yaddo and a resident-scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study Center in Italy, and received many awards, including a Guggenheim Award. In 1984 he retired from medicine, and is today recognized as one of the major contributors to the "medical humanities" field, writing, lecturing, and serving as contributing editor of Literature and Medicine. Below, I have rather arbitrarily categorized most of his work as fiction, realizing that many individual pieces might more properly be called essays.
Background
Contemporary Authors
Anderson CM. Richard Selzer and the Rhetoric of Surgery. Southern Illinois University Press; 1989.
Josyph P. What One Man Said to Another: Talks with Richard Selzer. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press; 1994Fiction
Rituals of Surgery (1974)
Mortal Lessons (1976)
Confessions of a Knife (1979)
Letters to a Young Doctor (1983)
Taking the World in for Repairs (1986)
Imagine a Woman and Other Tales (1990)
The Doctor Stories (1998)NonFiction
Down from Troy - A Doctor Comes of Age (1992)
Raising the Dead: A Doctor's Encounter with His Own Mortality (1994)
Audre Shafer
1956-
Graduating from Stanford University School of Medicine with an MD degree in 1983, Shafer practices and teaches anesthesiology at Stanford.
Background
http://www.ashafer.com/home.html
Fiction
The Mailbox (2006)
Poetry
Sleep Talker (2001)
Glenn E. Sheley
1911-
Sheley's medical training and career are unknown to me at this point, except that his name is followed by both D.O. and M.D. on the title page of the novel listed.
Fiction
The Story of Janet Court (1948)
Samuel Shem
1944-
Shem earned a Ph.D. in neurophysiology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and graduated from Harvard Medical School with an M.D. degree in 1973. After further training in psychiatry, he began a psychiatric practice in the Boston area, where he is on the faculty at Harvard. His classic House of God has spoken to many medical students and house officers, and sold over a million copies; and he has been invited to speak at many medical school commencment exercises. A playwright as well, Shem has seen two of his plays included in the Best Short Plays series (1979 and 1982).
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
House of God (1978)
Fine (1985)
Mount Misery (1997)Drama
Napoleon's Dinner; and Room for One Woman (1981)
Sir Charles Sherrington
1861-1952
Sherrington was graduated in medicine at Cambridge in 1885. Concentrating his medical work on pathology and physiology, he studied with Virchow and Koch, and became, in 1895, professor of physiology at the University of Liverpool, and subsequently at Oxford. For his fundamental discoveries in the field of neurophysiology he was knighted in 1922, and recevied (with Edgar Adrian) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1932.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.Poetry
The Assaying of Brabantius; and Other Verse (1925)NonFiction
Goethe on Nature and Science (1949)
Man on His Nature (1951)
Nathan Shiff
1914-
Shiff received his M.D. degree from the University of Alberta in 1939. He ran a general practice in New York, interrupted by service in the Army Medical Corps during World War II, and has written in the fields of both cardiology and psychiatry.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Diary of a Nymph (1961)
Ambulance Call (1967)NonFiction
Martha (1972)
Deborah Shlian
1948-
After graduation from University of Maryland Medical School in 1972, Shlian completed a family practice residency at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Los Angeles. She then practiced family medicine, became Director of Primary Care for the UCLA Student Health Service, and received an MBA degree along the way. She started a medical management consulting and executive/physician recruiting firm (Shlian & Associates) in 1992, and recently moved to Florida where she is on the advisory board of an MD/MBA program and does volunteer medical work, in addition to her nonfiction and fiction writing.
Fiction
Karen Evans, MD: #3 Space Medicine (1982)
Karen Evans, MD: #4 Transplant (?)
Nursery (1984)
Wednesday's Child (1986)
Shou (2000)NonFiction
Women in Medicine and Management - A Mentoring Guide (1995)
David Shobin
1945-
Shobin graduated M.D. from the University of Maryland in 1969. After residency in obstetrics and gynecology he began a private practice in 1975. He is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, as welll as a member of the Writers Guild of America.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Unborn (1981)
The Seeding (1982)
Obsession (?)
The Center (1997)
Terminal Condition (1998)
The Provider (in press - 2000)
Henry Shore
1912-1977
Shore qualified in Vienna in 1936, and subsequently was forced to flee the Nazis to England. He then worked in Uganda before becoming a health officer in the Midlands.
Background
Lowbury E. Apollo: An Anthology of Poems by Doctor Poets. London: Keynes Press; 1990.Poetry
The Roundabout (1972)
The Nomad and Other Poems (1973)
Apple Harvest (1974)
Selected Poems (1975)
Room 98 (1977)
Two Voyages (1978)
J. Lansing Shubert
1956-
Shubert earned his medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1982, did a family practice residency, then worked for several years at the Wagner Indian Health Service in South Dakota. He now practices family medicine in Maine.
Background
Barnes J. Doctor turns to writing to put his practice in perspective. Maine Sunday Telegram, 3 March 91: 5G.Fiction
The Legacy of George Partridgeberry (1991)
Neil Shulman
1945-
A 1971 medical graduate of Emory University, Shulman did further training in internal medicine, and has specialized in hypertension. He has written extensively on the subject, done research, and been involved with many programs promoting hypertension awareness and education in the general public, work for which he has received numerous local as well as national awards. His novel writing also has been successful, including What? Dead Again?, the basis for Doc Hollywood, the 1991 film starring Michael J. Fox. One caution in considering his writing, however, is the suggestion by at least one rare book authority that some of his books were cowritten, if not ghostwritten, by Carl Hiaasen, whose help Shulman does acknowledge on several dedication pages.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Finally...I'm a Doctor (1976)
What? Dead Again? (1979)
Doc Hollywood (1991)
The Backyard Tribe (1994)
Second Wind (1996)
Marc Siegel
?-
Siegel graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo with an M.D. degree in 1985, and then pursued an internal medicine residency. In addition to his practice of medicine, he is on the teaching faculty at New York University Medical Center.
Fiction
Bellevue (1998)
George Sigerson
1838-1925
Sigerson studied medicine at Queen's College, Cork, Ireland, graduating in 1859. His major interests over the years, however, were Irish politics (he was a senator of the Irish Free State Senate) and poetry, some of which he translated into modern English. James Joyce attended one of his classes, and Sigerson, like Oliver St. John Gogarty, is mentioned in Joyce's Ulysses.
Background
Welch R, ed. Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1996.Poetry
Songs and Poems (1927)NonFiction
The Poets and Poetry of Munster (1860)
Bards of the Gael and Gall (1897)
The Easter-Song of Sedulius (1922)
Gerry Silverman
1938-
Silverman graduated M.A. from Cambridge in 1959, did further training and became a psychiatrist and legal consultant in London. He is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Happy Divorce (1990)
Earl M. Simmons
?-
Born in Brooklyn, Simmons earned his M.D. degree from Howard University in 1962. He specialized in ear, nose, and throat, and facial plastic surgery.
Poetry
Turn, Hourglass (1977)
Eagle Spree (1979)
Geoffrey Simmons
1943-
A 1969 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where he began to write, Simmons completed an internal medicine residency and went into practice in Oregon.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Z Papers (1976)
The Adam Experiment (1978)
Pandemic (1980)
Murdock (1983)
The Glue Factory (1995)
To Glue or Not To Glue (1997)
Alison Sinclair
1959-
Born in England, Sinclair studied there and in Canada, where she earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at McMaster University. After attending the Banff Center School of Fine Arts Writing Workshop, and working in Boston as a scientist, she entered the University of Calgary medical program, graduating M.D. in 1999. She is currently (2000) a resident in anatomic pathology, as she continues to write award-winning (Locus' Best of Year List, Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist) science fiction.
Background
http://www.sff.net/people/asinclairFiction
Legacies (1995)
Blueheart (1996)
Cavalcade (1998)
Frank Slaughter
1908-
Slaughter graduated from Johns Hopkins University with an M.D. degree in 1930, did a surgical residency, and practiced surgery in Jacksonville, Florida, until his service in the Army Medical Corps during World War II. During the war he began to write, and in 1946 gave up medicine to write professionally. At the height of his writing career, he was producing about one novel - usually on a medical or biblical theme - every ten months; and he was one of the world's best-selling authors in the 1940's, 50's, and 60's. Several of his sixty-two books (of which only a few are listed below) were made into movies, such as the 1953 Sangaree, and 1971 Doctors' Wives.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
That None Should Die (1941)
Spencer Blade (1942)
A Touch of Glory (1945)
The Road to Bithynia (1951)
The Song of Ruth (1954)
Flight from Natchez (1955)
The Curse of Jezibel (1961)
Surgeon USA (1966)
No Greater Love (1985)NonFiction
Immortal Magyar: Semmelweis, Conqueror of Childbed Fever (1950)
Tobias Smollet
1721-1771
Smollett studied medicine at the University of Glasgow, but left in 1739 without a degree. After working as a surgeon's mate in the Royal Navy, and starting a surgical practice in London, he finally obtained an M.D. degree from Marischal College in Aberdeen. However, most of his energies before and after that were devoted to writing, editing, and translating (Voltaire and Cervantes). His literary output is all the more remarkable when one realizes that he died prematurely after years of progressive tuberculosis.
Background
Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th. ed.
Knapp LM. Tobias Smollett: Doctor of Men and Manners. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1949.Fiction
Oxford edition of the novels (11 vol.) (1925-26)Poetry and Drama
Gassman B, ed. Poems, Plays, and the Briton. University of Georgia Press; 1993.NonFiction
Travels through France and Italy (2 vol.) (1766)Letters
Knapp LM. The Letters of Tobias Smollett. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1970
Steven Snodgrass
1957-
Snodgrass graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in 1984, did a surgical residency, and now practices general surgery in Kentucky.
Fiction
Lethal Dose (1996)
Irwin Philip Sobel
1901-1991
Sobel graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1926. After internship and two years of study in Europe, he opened a pediatric practice in New York, serving as Director of Pediatrics at Lenox Hill Hospital 1962-1967. During the Second World War, he was chief of medical service at the112th General Hospital in England.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
The Hospital Makers (1973)
Virus Killer (1975)
Dr. Monte Cristo (1978)
William Starkey
1836-1918
Starkey studied at Queen's College, Cork, where he became a friend of George Sigerson; and graduated with a medical degree from Dublin. An occasional writer and frequent reader of poetry, he was much admired by and influential on his son, the poet James Sullivan Starkey (Seamus O'Sullivan): "To him I owe, and here gratefully acknowledge, my own interest in the poets, and I shall always treasure the memory of those evenings when he read for me, hour after hour...." (Preface to Poems by William Starkey, M.D. Dublin: Richard Clay and Sons, Limited; 1938).
Poetry
Poems and Translations (1875)
Poems (1938)
Michael Stein
1960-
Stein graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1985, was certified in internal medicine in 1988, and is presently in private practice and an associate professor of medicine at Brown University School of Medicine.
Fiction
Probabilities (1995)
White Life (1999)
Charles A. Stephens
1844-1931
An 1869 graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, Stephens worked a variety of odd jobs before becoming established as a writer of stories for the Youth's Companion, at the time the most popular periodical in the United States. Years of travel, adventure, and acquaintance with such luminaries as Samuel Clemens followed, as he turned out 2500 stories and thirty one books, under some forty pen names. At age forty, he went back to school, graduating from the Boston University Medical School, class of 1887. He never practiced, but the semi-scientific theories of longevity which he proposed in his later years have earned him some recognition as a pioneer in American gerontology.
Background
Adams H. Dreamer who believed in brain power. Maine Sunday Telegram. 17 January 1982, pp1D, 3D.
Barnes J. Stephens fans make sure author of 'The Old Squire' series isn't forgotten. Maine Sunday Telegram 11 June 1994, p4E.Fiction
Grandfather's Broadaxe, and Other Stories of a Maine Farm Family (1967)
Charles Adams Tales (1973)
Little Big-heart and Other Stories (1974)
Stories from the Old Squire's Farm (1995)NonFiction
Natural Salvation; Immortal Life on the Earth from the Growth of Knowledge and the Development of the Human Brain (1909).
Karl Stern
1906-1975
Born in Germany, Stern graduated from the University of Frankfurt with an M.D. degree in 1930. After further study of psychiatry, in Germany and England, he emirated to Canada where he served as associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal and at the University of Ottawa.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Through Dooms of Love (1960)NonFiction
The Pillar of Fire (1951)
The Third Revolution (1954)
The Flight from Woman (1965)
Aryeh Stollman
1954-
A 1980 graduate of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York, Stollman did further training in internal medicine, pathology, and radiology; and practices the latter in New York.
Fiction
The Far Euphrates (1997)
John Stone
1936-
Stone graduated M.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and did further training in internal medicine and cardiology. He became a professor of medicine and cardiology at Emory University School of Medicine, and also served there as director of admissions and dean. In addition to the works cited below, he co-edited with Richard Reynolds a collection of medically related writings, On Doctoring (New York: Simon & Schuster; 1991).
Poetry
The Smell of Matches (1972)
In All This Rain (1980)
Renaming the Streets (1985)
Where Water Begins: New Poems and Prose (1998)NonFiction
In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine (1990)
Victor C. Strasburger
1949-
Strasburger edited the Yale University Literary Magazine while an undergraduate there, and received his M.D. degree from Harvard University in 1975. After further pediatric training he began a pediatric practice, with appointment to the teaching staff at Yale. His special interest has been adolescent medicine.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Rounding Third and Heading Home (1974)NonFiction
Adolescents and the Media (1995)
Marc J. Straus
1943-
After graduating with an M.D. degree from State University of New York Downstate,in 1968, Straus did further training in oncology, and is now a practitioner and professor of oncology at New York Medical College.
Poetry
One Word (1994)
Robert Julius Strobos
1921-
Born in the Netherlands, Strobos earned his M.D. degree at the University of Amsterdam in 1945, then pursued further study of neurology and psychiatry in England and the United States. In 1959 he became a United States citizen, and in 1960 professor and chairman of the department of neurology at New York Medical College, Valhalla. Originally a Dutch writer, he resumed writing in English once settled in the United States.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
Treading Water (1980)
Han Suyin
1917-
Born in China, and speaking Chinese until age ten, Suyin did her medical studies in England, graduating M.B., B.S. (honours) from London University in 1948. She then practiced medicine in China until about 1961, while writing a series of autobiographical and fictional works. Several of her books, including A Many-Splendored Thing, have been made into movies.
Background
Contemporary AuthorsFiction
A Many-Splendored Things (1952)
...And the Rain My Drink (1956)
The Mountain Is Young (1958)
Two Loves (1962)
The Four Faces (1963)
The Enchantress (1985)NonFiction
My House Has Two Doors (5 vol.) (?)
A Share of Loving (1987)
