Editor's Column

Editor's Column The voyage of Literature and Medicine continues with an issue that focuses, for the most part, on the actual writing career of physicians. Serious thought was given to devoting this third volume entirely to creative work by current medical practitioners, but the idea was abandoned in favor of an issue that would highlight a few highly accomplished physician-writers. The focus then is on certain physicians who write, and write very seriously. Future issues of Literature and Medicine will carry poems, plays (if space permits) and, we hope, short stories by other practicing physician-writers. I regret that several fine physician-writers are not represented here, and trust they will appear in future issues. The writers included in this issue are not intended to demonstrate any inclusive (or exclusive) listing, but simply to stand on their own merits. The special homage to Dannie Abse is, on many levels, designed to honor perhaps the finest and most diversified writing physician now working in the English language. (One regret was the lack of time to explore physicians writing in other languages.) Abse, primarily a poet, is also an accomplished playwright and essayist, and his world-wide reputation is still growing. Literature and Medicine is proud and honored to pay tribute to his work, and to underscore, featuring his poetry and prose, with critical reviews, his enormous literary accomplishments. Similarly, we are deeply honored to present creative work by five other physician-writers: poets John Stone of Atlanta; Grace Herman of New York City; the coruscatingly talented William Ober; Norman Kreitman, a Scotch psychiatrist and poet; and the late Michael Halberstam, whose letters are here published for the first time. A doctor-novelist from Washington , D.C., Halberstam was shot by a notorious burglar whom he caught robbing his home. Badly wounded, Halberstam later saw and ran down his assassin while driving himself to a hospital. We are honored, in the Halberstam section, to have the brilliant writer Russell Baker appear in our pages. In a center spread devoted to the future beyond 1984, we are presenting the award-winning work by medical students who participated in a nationwide contest judged by John Stone. Doubtless we will be hearing from many of these young writers in the future. We are particularly pleased to single out the special career of the American poet-physician John Stone. His volume of poems, In All This Rain, and an earlier book, The Smell of Matches, constitute an enduring tribute to a hard-working physician at the prime of his career, both medical and literary. A penetrating profile by Susan V. Lawrence establishes Stone's unique gifts as a physician, poet and human being. The balance of the volume, essays on Walker Percy, William Carlos Williams, and the badly neglected novelists of Quebec, round out an issue that we hope many old (and new) readers will find rewarding and illuminating, giving further testimony to the many interrelated issues and themes that have been the special characteristics of Literature and Medicine from the beginning. My fellow editors, Kathryn Allen Rabuzzi, D. Hey ward Brock, Peter W. Graham, and Joanne Trautmann all contributed to this volume. They are remarkable collaborators. I am also indebted to Wayne Knoll, a Georgetown University English professor, who deepened my interest in the subject of physicianwriters , and to four wise friends, Fred Morgan, M.D., Joseph Autry, M.D., Ira Pastan, M.D., and the "doctor-artist" I have spent the most time with, often reluctantly, over the years, Theodore M. Fields, D.D.S. S. Tobie Hewitt, who worked as Assistant Editor of this issue and who has been instrumental in several of my other literary explorations, has once again given invaluable support and assistance. I am grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation for a Fellowship at Bellagio, Italy, where I was able to think about this volume. William Claire ...