Editor's Column

•g^ Editor's Column 'i* In Paterson, William Carlos Williams speaks of divorce as "the sign of knowledge in our time." Yet the countertheme of that poem is marriage , a conjunction of seeming incompatibilities. It is to help "possibilize " (to borrow James Joyce's term) such a conjunction that this journal has come into being. The contents of this first issue are designed to explain, probe, and illustrate the nature of the strange marriage between literature and medicine . For explanation, the editorial board turned to fellow board member Joanne Trautmann, whose ten years' experience teaching literature and medicine in a medical setting gives her a record unmatched by anyone else and thus makes her an expert witness to this union. For probing, we turned to our contributing editors, asking those who wished to participate in this inaugural issue for "one lovely page or more" of their thoughts on literature and medicine. Their thoughts also include Edmund D. Pellegrino's introduction to Enid Rhodes Peschel's anthology Medicine and Literature, reprinted here as "To Look Feelingly—the Affinities of Medicine and Literature." A theoretical, often highly tentative approach to the union of literature and medicine characterizes these essays, which seek from various perspectives to expand the way for further exploration rather than to fix once and for all firm boundaries. While some voice apprehensions, all suggest the hope or the belief that something truly worthy of the "and" will emerge from this venture. Following this somewhat tentative declaration that a wedding has taken place, we pause for reviews and photographs. While not precisely literature, a relevant, visual center section will be a continuing feature of this journal. This time we introduce four of Richard Penrose Schmidt's photographs of wild flowers with medicinal uses, accompanied by appropriate commentary on the Doctrine of Signatures. Following these preliminary rituals, the union of literature and medicine is assumed. The last section illustrates some variations within that union. Richard Selzer's essay leads off, providing a previously unpublished example of this physician-writer's work, to which M. Teresa Tavormina's commentary provides an appropriate complement. The last four essays all illustrate, in different ways, the affinity of literature and medicine, which the statements of Pellegrino and Banks so strongly Literature and Medicine 1 (Rev. ed., 1992) ix-x © 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University Press EDITOR'S COLUMN stress. Larry and Sandra Churchill's essay focuses on the stories patients tell, emphasizing patients' needs to engage in the act of telling. David Jaymes's argument persuades that the traditional literary device of irony is an effective therapeutic tool used by some psychotherapists to help their patients overcome certain self-defeating behaviors. In a somewhat more familiar vein, Roland F. Anderson's essay uses literature and literary biography for purposes of retroactive diagnosis rather than current therapy. Finally, Michael Sexson's essay traces a number of mythological images of healing, embodying the Keatsian notion that poetry heals and guiding the reader into ever deeper levels of understanding the paradox that the wounder also heals. Those people who have helped "possibilize" this journal deserve thanks: the contributing editors; my fellow editors; Herb McArthur, John W. Kalas, and William D. Eastman from the State University of New York; and above all Bruce Dearing, University Professor of Humanities, Upstate Medical Center, State University of New York, to whom this inaugural issue is gratefully dedicated. Kathryn Allen Rabuzzi ...