DOCTORS DIVERSIFY
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publishing many scientific papers has become mandatory for pursuing an academic career in medicine, whether it is for tenure or for promotion. Thankfully, it has also become much easier to study the available literature on any topic with the advent of search engines like PubMed and Google Scholar and an exponential growth can be expected soon with the expansion of AI. The“ Open Access” publications have made perusal of available data on any topic even more comprehensive as the entire paper( not just the abstract) can be accessed online readily. What took a couple of days of thumping through several dusty journals in the medical library can be readily accomplished in a matter of minutes online with the home computer.
Another form of publication constitutes the tens of thousands of medical textbooks authored by physicians, which are vital for medical education. For many authors of such books, it is a labor of love, as the monetary gain from royalties is often minimal. While Edwin Smith Papyrus is considered the oldest medical text, the first medical book printed in the New World is believed to be Francisco Bravo’ s Opera Medicinalia, published in 1570. Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne’ s book published in 1862 depicting muscles involved in different facial expressions( the“ Duchenne smile” being the most well-known) is considered the best medical photography book of that century, The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression. One of the most well-known books in Medicine, Gray’ s Anatomy, was authored by a physician, Henry Gray of St. George’ s Hospital in London. The first edition came out in 1858, and it has been continuously published for the past 167 years with the latest edition( 2025) in print and in eBook version. I still cherish my copy of Sir William Osler’ s classic The Principles and Practice of Medicine. First published in 1892, it was perhaps one of the most influential medical books in the training and practice of modern medicine. became one of the most successful writers of our time. He published The Andromeda Strain while a medical student, followed by the remarkably successful Jurassic Park and The Lost World. He chose to be a writer and a Hollywood director and did not actually practice medicine.
There are many physician authors who based their books on their medical knowledge, not pure fiction or poetry. Robin Cook wrote the medical thriller Coma, while doing residency in ophthalmology in 1977; other books include Outbreak, Shock, Host and many more. Oliver Sacks was a prolific writer while he practiced neurology in New York. Some of his greatest works are The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia and Awakenings. The tradition of medical writing is kept alive by contemporary physicians like Sidhartha Mukherjee( The Emperor of All Maladies, The Gene: An Intimate History), Abraham Verghese( Cutting for Stone) and Khaled Hosseini( The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns and the Mountains Echoed).
I am hopeful that reading these fabulous works created by numerous physician authors will stimulate the dormant writer in you. Let me end with a quote attributed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
“ There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book. The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.”
Dr. Iyer practices at the Neurodiagnostic Center of Louisville and is a retired professor of neurology at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Let us look at a fascinating group of physicians who had the gift of authoring fiction, poetry and drama. They can be categorized into two groups: one writing novels that relate to a medical topic or cases; and the other, pure fiction unrelated to medicine. Among the latter group I admire most Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who graduated from the University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1881. He created the most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, influenced by his teacher, Dr. Joseph Bell, who possessed an uncanny skill in diagnostic deduction through impressive observational skill. Somerset Maugham became a physician in 1897 but was more interested in writing. He excelled as a playwright but also wrote several novels and short stories. Some of the famous ones are Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, and The Painted Veil. Michael Crichton studied medicine at Harvard and
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