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168 BOOK REVIEWS and works of a number of other physician-writers, both Continental and English. At times the compendiousness of the presentation tends to overwhelm the analysis of those dynamics, and narrative sometimes gives way to a multipUcation of examples from poetry and contemporary documents . But the overall argument is built and sustained persuasively and with great originality, and certain chapters provide gems of insight. One of these chapters is "The Pharmacy of Disease," in which, after laying out various theories of disease and their implications, the author brings her observations around to an astute reading of The Fall of Hyperion, whose poet, afflicted by Apollo, finds that "disease brings health, its purging affliction makes whole, its debilitation brings life, its suffering brings the exposure of knowledge, and its meaning can ever be transformed into the signs and paradigms that govern health and art" (p. 145). A summary chapter called "The Imagination of Life" brings the threads of the argument together in a graceful assessment of the fundamental redemptiveness and generosity of the Romantic idea of heaUng, in which the self-sacrificial, voluntary vulnerability of the healer is essential , and in which pain itself plays a necessary part as an avenue of illumination. De Almeida's representation of Romantic medicine is both meticulous and sympathetic. If Romantic Medicine and John Keats causes the reader to recognize some of the fallacies that make romantic a term of dismissal, it also conveys a rich appreciation of a medical philosophy that sought seriously to address important questions about body, mind, and spirit—questions that a postmodern generation may need to be reminded of. In that respect the book is a timely and provocative impetus to reflection . -Marilyn R. Chandler MuIs College Jon Mukand, ed., Vital Lines: Contemporary Fiction about Medicine. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. xxviii + 436 pp. Clothbound, $22.95. Jon Mukand's Vital Lines is an anthology of contemporary fiction, fifty-six short stories that describe the diverse world of illness. Most of the stories are cast upon the background of medicine and medical practices of Western society. Book Reviews 169 Some of the stories are told from the point of view of patients who Uve with illness from day to day; some are told by health-care professionals who learn to cope with uncertainty and crisis by assuming the mask of professional distance as a way of Ufe; and still other stories describe the observations and feelings of the friends and relatives of those who are ill. Of the fifty-six authors who have written these stories, only two are physicians, but all seem equally experienced with illness. At the end of the anthology, brief descriptions of the authors provide glimpses of their professional backgrounds, but little is revealed about their motivation for telling stories about medicine and experiences with illness. Mukand's intent is to focus on contemporary fiction about medicine, and as a result he eliminates many well-known and often-read literary works that pertain to medicine. No stories by William Carlos Williams or Franz Kafka appear. The diversity of the selection of short stories—the subjects, the voices, the moods—is remarkable. For instance, stories such as "The Wrath-Bearing Tree," by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, and "In Search of the Rattlesnake Plantain," by Margaret Atwood, focus on elderly patients who are demented or delirious, while "The Operation," by Scott Russell Sanders , and "Only the Little Bone," by David Huddle, describe experiences of children with surgery and injury, respectively. Other stories describe experiences of physicians. Richard Stern, in "Dr. Cahn's Visit," provides a view of the life of an ill physician, whereas John Stone, in "An Infected Heart," and Richard Selzer, in "The Discus Thrower," write as physicians about their roles in caring for patients. Mukand's task of including and excluding stories was immense; his final selections are of the highest Uterary quality and will capture the interests of many readers. A better collection is hard to imagine. Mukand has arranged the stories into eight descriptively titled sections : "The Medical Environment," "Patients Look at Illness," "Looking at Doctors," "Family and Friends," "Women," "Mental IUness," "Disability ," and "Social Issues." Why Mukand chose these...

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