The UK's Independent has an interesting story about medicine, writing, and doctors who write.
From the story...
It's tempting to ask why these medics turn to the pen and the MacBook. The answer, I think, is twofold. The first is that medicine, in the end, is about finding out what's wrong and fixing it - in a way, the theme of Cutting for Stone itself. Anyone who thinks that writing isn't a way of trying to do the same thing has never written, nor read with care.
But the more important thing, I believe, is that medicine, like writing, is about stories. Sometimes I wondered why I had gone into such a poor-paying, low-status trade, until I realised that not only had my father comforted me with stories when I was four and my mother terribly ill in hospital, but my upbringing had been to the background music of his stories. A woman with her leg. A man who was dying. A boy with this, a girl with that, Mrs Beelby with her specimens dropped through the letterbox even on Christmas Eve. When he died last year, I found a letter from the Chief Medical Officer of the GPO complimenting him on his reports (he was their regional medical examiner): "always good medicine, good English and a delight to read".
Doctoring is in a way primarily about stories.
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