Literatim

by Howard Markel

"In 1959, shortly before his death and while reflecting over his roller-coaster career as a Hollywood film director, Preston Sturges (who I write about more fully later in this book) remarked, "the only amazing thing about my career...is that I ever had one at all." (1) The same might be said about my career as a physician and historian of medicine. As a young boy, some of my best companions were the characters I met on the pages of novels, stories, theatrical scripts, and screenplays. Fascinated by human stories, contradictions, both moral and physical, and worlds so vastly different from...