When Medicine Calls for Poetry
I have read many stories about certain physicians who were also poets or who composed poetry at their most poetic moments. This is, incidentally, not a systematic reading, but rather a passion for reading and literature that made me notice this strange connection! What an enchanting moment, indeed: the moment when a physician turns to verse, unable to describe the emotions he is experiencing at that very instant, and calls upon a more delicate language—the language of poetry—like the surgeon Mitchell, or when a skilled physician such as Avicenna wishes to teach medicine in a non-traditional way. This raises a question: why does medicine sometimes substitute its scientific language with that of poetry?
1. Ronald Ross
The British physician Ronald Ross was among the doctors dispatched to work in the Indian Medical Service. At that time, malaria was claiming huge numbers of civilians and soldiers, with no one knowing how this tiny parasite was transmitted from one infected person to another. In 1897, he discovered the cause: after observing under a microscope the growth of the malaria parasite inside a specific type of mosquito called the “Anopheles,” he realized that this mosquito species was the culprit. The following day, he wrote a poem and sent it to his wife, in which he expressed his feeling that God had placed something extraordinary in his hands.
At the end of the poem, Ross writes:
O death, where is thy sting? Thy victory, O grave?
It is as if he is defying death, saying: Where is your sting, O Death? And where is your triumph, O Grave?
2. Silas Weir Mitchell
The Massachusetts General Hospital (M.G.H.) in Boston held a grand celebration in 1896, marking the 50th anniversary of the first surgical operation using ether anesthesia. Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, a pioneer of neurology in the United States, was among the attendees. He held a different view, preferring to deliver a poem titled “The Birth and Death of Pain” rather than give a speech. Had I been present, I would have declared that the poem itself was the celebration, rendering any further words unnecessary. In this poem, Mitchell proclaimed medicine’s triumph over pain during surgical procedures.
He concludes with these lines (paraphrased):
There will never come, through the ages, a sweeter hour than that hour when hopes, doubts, and fears converge, and in profound silence, a restless mind awaits, announcing by divine will the death of pain.
3. Oliver Wendell Holmes
After the invention of the stethoscope in 1816 by the French physician René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec, and its subsequent spread among physicians—following an era when diagnosis relied heavily on what was known as “clinical examination”—the physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, an academic and literary figure who ranks among the most famous writers of the 19th century, wrote a satirical poem in 1848, 32 years after the invention of the stethoscope. Its verses describe the major transformation this instrument brought to diagnostic methods. The poem was not merely a celebration of the new invention; rather, it resembled a trial, with its title and tone characterized by wit, satire, and professional reflection. In one stanza, he emphasizes the necessity for physicians not to abandon clinical examination, as it remains the most important and accurate method:
Now use your ears, all you that can,
But don’t forget to mind your eyes.
4. Avicenna
Speaking of Avicenna is extremely difficult; he was the “Sheikh al-Ra’is” (Chief) who held a distinguished place in the history of thought and medicine. He had a clear affinity for literature and is credited with poems in both Persian and Arabic. He frequently employed verse to present scientific knowledge, a fact well known to many. In my view, his greatest poetic achievement is his medical rhyme (aruz), which was translated into Latin and studied in European universities for several centuries.
I will include here a couplet that I particularly admired. Readers may consult the full text online; it exceeds 1,300 lines, forming a massive educational text that benefited Europe for years, as I mentioned earlier, dear reader:
Medicine preserves health and cures disease
From any ailment that afflicts the body.
