TY - BOOK ID - 83580682 TI - The last physician : Walker Percy and the moral life of medicine AU - Elliott, Carl AU - Lantos, John PY - 1999 SN - 0822323362 0822323699 0822398435 1322047499 PB - Durham, N.C. Duke University Press DB - UniCat KW - Ethics in literature KW - Literature and medicine KW - Literature and mental illness KW - Medical ethics KW - Medicine in literature KW - Physicians' writings, American KW - artsen (geneesheren) KW - bio-ethiek (medische, biomedische ethiek, bio-ethische aspecten) KW - culturele aspecten (kunst) KW - narratieve ethiek KW - American physicians' writings KW - Physicians' literary writings, American KW - American literature KW - Medical care in literature KW - Biomedical ethics KW - Clinical ethics KW - Ethics, Medical KW - Health care ethics KW - Medical care KW - Medicine KW - Bioethics KW - Professional ethics KW - Nursing ethics KW - Social medicine KW - Authors, Insane KW - Mental illness and literature KW - Poets, Insane KW - Medicine and literature KW - History KW - History and criticism KW - médecins KW - bioéthique (éthique médicale, biomédicale, aspects bioéthiques) KW - aspects culturels (art) KW - éthique narrative KW - Moral and ethical aspects KW - Percy, Walker, KW - Criticism and interpretation. KW - Ethics. KW - Knowledge KW - Medicine. KW - Medicine in literature. KW - Ethics in literature. KW - Medical ethics. KW - History and criticism. KW - Professional ethics. Deontology KW - Human medicine KW - Thematology KW - Percy, Walker UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:83580682 AB - Walker Percy brought to his novels the perspective of both a doctor and a patient. Trained as a doctor at Columbia University, he contracted tuberculosis during his internship as a pathologist at Bellevue Hospital and spent the next three years recovering, primarily in TB sanitoriums. This collection of essays explores not only Percy’s connections to medicine but also the underappreciated impact his art has had—and can have—on medicine itself. The contributors—physicians, philosophers, and literary critics—examine the relevance of Percy’s work to current dilemmas in medical education and health policy. They reflect upon the role doctors and patients play in his novels, his family legacy of depression, how his medical background influenced his writing style, and his philosophy of psychiatry. They contemplate the private ways in which Percy’s work affected their own lives and analyze the author’s tendency to contrast the medical-scientific worldview with a more spiritual one. Assessing Percy’s stature as an author and elucidating the many ways that reading and writing can combine with diagnosing and treating to offer an antidote to despair, they ask what it means to be a doctor, a writer, and a seeker of cures and truths—not just for the body but for the malaise and diseased spirituality of modern times. This collection will appeal to lovers of literature as well as medical professionals—indeed, anyone concerned with medical ethics and the human side of doctoring. ER -