1st Edition

Medicine and Literature The Doctor's Companion to the Classics

By John Salinsky Copyright 2001

    ‘Medicine and Literature’ is the doctor's guide to the classics. How can a doctor best understand the emotions and behaviour of his or her patients? An effective and deeply satisfying route is through an appreciation of literature, and the profound understanding its authors have of the human predicament. In this extraordinary and enlightening volume, general practitioner John Salinsky guides the reader through some of the world's finest works. In each chapter he describes a classic novel, short story, play or poem, revealing them to be easily accessible and enjoyable. He shows how parallels can be drawn between characters in literature and in the consulting room. Developed from his long-running column 'Education for Primary care, Dr Salinsky's book give doctors a new perspective on the doctor-patient relationship and provides unique support to communication skills.

    1. Introduction: Why should doctors read the classics 2. A Country Doctor a short story by Franz Kafka 3. A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare 4. Anna Karen by Lev Tolstoy 5. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 6. Wuthering Heights by Emily Jane Bronte 7. Ulysses by James Joyce 8. Indian Camp by Ernest Hemingway 9. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 10. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy 11. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne 12. The sonnets of William Shakespeare and John Donne 13. A Country Doctor's Notebook and The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 14. Middlemarch by George Eliot 15. If on a Winter's Night, a Traveller by Italo Calvino 16. Bleak House by Charles Dickens 17. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 18. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 19. Serving suggestions for teachers

    Biography

    Dr. John Salinsky is a General Practioner in Wembley, Middlesex and Course Organiser at the Whittington Vocational Training Scheme for General Practice.