Medicine and literature.

Catching up on some reading . . . the May 22 issue of The Lancet continues its series of articles by (or, in earlier installments, about) physician-writers with a truly splendid piece by Brazilian physician and author Moacyr Scliar. All are available for free (albeit with a brief registration form). Here are all the articles in this series that I know of:

• Moacry Scliar
• Martin Winckler
• Richard Selzer
• Jerome Groopman
• Perri Klass
• John Murray
• Phil Whitaker
• Jed Mercurio
• Khaled Hosseini
• Samuel Shem
• Atul Gawande
• Rita Charon
• Cecil Helman
• Jonathan Kaplan

I hope students in the Law, Literature & Medicine class I teach with Patty Hicks will get the chance to read a few of these.

Meanwhile, permit me this idle speculation: Where have all the serious lawyer-writers gone? Most seem to have settled for the easy bucks of mass-market pot-boilers with an option on the screenplay, soon to be a major motion picture opening in theater near you. Scott Turow is the exception - a gifted writer whose mysteries transcend the genre by lifting the entire enterprise up a level or two. My Scottish compadre, Sandy McCall-Smith, has done the same with his successful series on Mma. Precious Ramotswe of Botswana and her No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. For another generation, Louis Auchincloss was comfortable writing serious fiction, and his near-contemporary was the poet Archibald MacLeish. And . . . ?