The Last Physician: Walker Percy and the Moral Life of Medicine

by Carl Elliott (Editor), John D. Lantos (Editor)

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. Contributors. Robert Coles, Brock Eide, Carl Elliott, John D. Lantos, Ross McElwee, Richard Martinez, Martha Montello, David Schiedermayer, Jay Tolson, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Laurie Zoloth-Dorfman

Genres: Medicine, Essays

184 pages, Paperback

First published September 22, 1999

About the author

Carl Elliott is a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. Trained in medicine as well as philosophy, Elliott is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award, the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library of Congress, a resident fellowship at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, and the Weatherhead Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Mother Jones and The American Scholar. He has been a visiting faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Sydney, and the University of Otago in New Zealand, where he is an affiliate of the Bioethics Centre.

Reviews

[Jack Mierl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for any budding physician wanting to read more about Percy's life and the role of his medical career played into it. Great book for any writer who wants to know how literature can be incorporated into medicine

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful, if somewhat uneven collection on the theme of medicine and the writing and life of Walker Percy. Several essays stand out, including those of biographers Jay Tolson and Bertram Wyatt-Brown (as well as independent filmmaker (“Sherman’s March”) Ross McElwee.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

tried to get a better idea of what was going on in "The Moviegoer" by reading these essays on Percy. they were somewhat insightful but didn't really get to the heart of my issues with the moviegoer.

[Abraham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Check the essays by Elliott...