This article illustrates the use and value of literature in increasing one's sensitivity and compassion in areas extending beyond the prescribed boundaries of medical training and practice. “Home Burial” by Robert Frost and “Dead Baby” by William Carlos Williams portray in different ways the anguish and despair of parents after a child's death. If anatomy, biochemistry, and micro-biology prepare health care providers for the clinical dimensions of their work, these poems attend to other attributes of good care giving.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
StoneJ., Gaudeamaus Igitur, in Renaming the Streets, Louisiana University Press, Baton Rouge, 1987.
2.
PellegrinoE., Humanism and the Physician, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, Tennessee, p. 14, 1979.
3.
StoneJ., Medicine and the Arts, Theoretical Medicine, 6, pp. 309–325, 1985.
4.
TrautmannJ., The Wonders of Literature in Medical Education, Mobius, 2, p. 2, 1982.
5.
FrostR., “Home Burial,”Complete Poems of Robert Frost, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1964.
6.
WilliamsW. C., “Dead Baby,”The Doctor Stories, ColesR. (ed.), New Directions Books, 1984.
7.
ClouserD., quoted in T. Dankmyer, Adding Perspective: Humanities in Medical Education, The New Physician, 37, pp. 6–8,16, 1984.
8.
ReichW., The Division of Health and Humanities in the Georgetown School of Medicine, Georgetown Medical Bulletin, 37, pp. 13–17, 1984.
9.
FlexnerA., Medical Education in the United States and Canada, Carnegie Foundation, New York, 1910.
10.
11.
SandersC., A Comparison of Adult Bereavement in the Death of a Spouse, Child and Parent, Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 10, pp. 303–322, 1979.
12.
RosenH., Unspoken Grief, Heath and Company, Lexington, Massachusetts;1986.
13.
ChurchillL., Why Literature and Medicine?, in Literature and Medicine: Toward a New Discipline, 1, pp. 34–35, RabuzziK. A. (ed.), SUNY Press, Albany, 1982.
14.
BanksJ., Once upon a Time: Interpretation in Literature and Medicine, in Literature and Medicine: Toward a New Discipline, 1, SUNY Press, Albany, pp. 223–227, 1982.
15.
BurkeK., William Carlos Williams: A Critical Approach, William Carlos Williams, AngoffC. (ed.), Farleigh Dickenson University Press, Rutherford New Jersey, pp. 15–19, 1972.
16.
OatesJ. C., Characters Dangerously Like Us, New York Times Book Review, September 14, 1986.
