A FIRST-EVER COLLECTION FROM AMERICA'S MOST DISTINGUISHED HISTORIAN OF MEDICINE AND CULTURAL LIFE
From Howard Markel, author of An Anatomy of Addiction "Absorbing, vivid" ― Sherwin Nuland, The New York Times Book Review, front page) and The Kelloggs (2017 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Biography), Literatim is a collection of the writer's essays on medicine, American culture, and how their intersections compose the interstitial matter of modern life.
Through topics ranging from illness to baseball to the lives of America's most beloved artists and performers, Markel's eye for the unexamined corners of contemporary life align with his singular storytelling ability for a collection that demonstrates how literature, like medicine, can be a portal to better understanding the human condition.
Selected and with an introduction by the award-winning and bestselling author, Literatim gathers more than 80 essays, a thirty-year retrospective of Markel's work from 1987 to 2019. "Although writers and physicians use markedly different tools and approaches," he writes, "both are recording and interpreting narratives." Literatim is a stirring and entertaining testament to that persisting truth.
Author(s): Howard Markel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 376
City: Oxford
Cover
Literatim
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Introduction
Part 1
1. “I Swear by Apollo”: The Hippocratic Oath
2. The Death of Dr. Samuel Johnson: A Historical Spoof on the Clinicopathologic Conference
3. Charles Dickens’ Work to Help Establish the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London
4. The Medical Detectives: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of Robert Koch’s Lymph
5. The Last Alcoholic Days of F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. Blowing the Whistle: The Internship of William Carlos Williams, M.D., and His Abrupt Resignation From the New York Nursery and Child’s Hospital
7. Sinclair Lewis’ Arrowsmith: The Great American Medical Novel of Medicine
8. Living (and Practicing) in the Shadow of the House of God
Part 2
9. The Stethoscope and the Art of Listening
10. “Experiments and Observations”: How William Beaumont and Alexis St. Martin Seized the Moment of Scientific Progress
11. On John Snow
12. Dr. Osler’s Relapsing Fever
13. The Extraordinary Dr. Biggs
14. Sigmund Freud’s Long Line of Cocaine: Part I. Carl Koller
15. Sigmund Freud’s Long Line of Cocaine: Part II. The Accidental Addict
16. Exploring the Dangerous Trades With Dr. Alice Hamilton
17. The Principles and Practice of Medicine: How a Textbook, a Former Baptist Minister, and an Oil Tycoon Shaped the Modern American Medical and Public Health Industrial–Research Complex
18. Onward Howard Kelly, Marching as to War
19. April 12, 1955: Tommy Francis and the Salk Vaccine
20. John Harvey Kellogg and the Pursuit of Wellness
Part 3
21. Grasping at Straws: Eugene O’Neill, Tuberculosis, and Transformation
22. Men in White: The Operating Room’s Debut Into Popular American Culture
23. Not So Great Moments: The “Discovery” of Ether Anesthesia and Its “Re-Discovery” by Hollywood
24. “Calling Dr. Kildare”: The Literary Lives of Frederick Schiller Faust, a.k.a. Max Brand
25. “Gotta’ Sing! Gotta’ Diagnose!” A Postmortem Examination of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Medical Musical Allegro
26. Cole Porter’s Eventful Nights and Days
27. Physician, Heal Thyself: Arthur Miller, Henrik Ibsen, and the Enemies of the People
Part 4
28. George Gershwin’s Too-Short Life Ended on a Blue Note
29. Elvis’ Addiction Was the Perfect Prescription for an Early Death
30. How a Strange Rumor of Walt Disney’s Death Became Legend
31. A Symphony of Second Opinions on Mozart’s Final Illness
32. Marilyn Monroe and the Prescription Drugs That Killed Her
33. Did Lou Gehrig Actually Die of Lou Gehrig’s Disease?
34. The “Home Run King”: How Babe Ruth Helped Pioneer Modern Cancer Treatment
35. Remembering Ryan White, the Teen Who Fought Against the Stigma of AIDS
36. The Day Judy Garland’s Star Burned Out
37. How A Raisin in the Sun Author Lorraine Hansberry Defined What It Meant to Be “Young, Gifted and Black”
38. Edgar Allan Poe’s Greatest Mystery Was His Death
39. The Medical Mystery That Helped Make Thomas Edison an Inventor
40. How a Hotel Convention Became Ground Zero for This Deadly Bacteria
41. The Brilliant Brothers Behind the Mayo Clinic
42. How Walter Reed Earned His Status as a Legend and Hospital Namesake
43. Dr. Alzheimer and the Patient Who Helped Reveal a Devastating Disease
44. Diagnosing Vincent Van Gogh
45. How Poet John Keats Met His Early End
46. The Infectious Disease That Sprung Al Capone from Alcatraz
47. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, a Renowned Medical Missionary with a Complicated History
48. How Playing with Dangerous X-Rays Led to the Discovery of Radiation Treatment for Cancer
49. How Medicare Came to Be, Thanks to Harry S. Truman
50. How to Save a Dying Heart
51. C. Everett Koop’s Rise from “Dr. Unqualified” to Surgeon-in-Chief
52. A Hormonal Happy Birthday
53. For Dostoevsky, Epilepsy Was a Matter of Both Life and Literature
54. The Death of Oscar Wilde: The Wittiest Man Who Ever Lived
55. April 23, 1616: The Day William Shakespeare Died
56. But What Caused Houdini’s Mysterious Death?
57. September 29: The Tylenol Murders of 1982
58. The Day Doctors Began to Conquer Smallpox
59. In 1850, Ignaz Semmelweis Saved Lives with Three Words: Wash Your Hands
60. “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”: The Final Episode of M*A*S*H, February 28, 1983
61. Louis Pasteur’s Risky Move to Save a Boy from Almost Certain Death
62. “I Have Seen My Death”: How the World Discovered the X-Ray
63. How a Boy Became the First to Beat Back Diabetes
64. Alfred Nobel’s Spirit of Discovery
65. The Real Story Behind Penicillin
66. The Day Scientists Discovered the “Secret of Life”
67. The Surgeon General’s Famous Report That Alerted Americans to the Deadly Dangers of Cigarettes
68. The Publication of Alcoholics Anonymous: One of the Most Influential Books in the History of Medicine and Public Health
69. Presidents Get Sick and Die: What Happens Next Hasn’t Always Been Clear
70. December 14, 1799: The Excruciating Final Hours of President George Washington
71. The Dirty, Painful Death of President James A. Garfield
72. When a “Secret President” Ran the Country
73. The “Strange” Death of Warren G. Harding
74. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Painfully Eloquent Final Words
75. How Florence Nightingale Cleaned up “Hell on Earth” Hospitals and Became an International Hero
76. Celebrating Rebecca Lee Crumpler, First African American Woman Physician
77. How Elizabeth Blackwell Became the First Female Doctor in the United States
78. Clara Barton’s Crusade to Bring the Red Cross to America
79. Happy Birthday to the Woman Who Revolutionized Endocrinology
80. The Quarantine of “Typhoid Mary” Malone
81. How Nellie Bly Went Undercover to Expose Abuse of the Mentally Ill
Acknowledgments
Index
