Last Physician

Carl Elliott is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of A Philosophical Disease: Bioethics, Culture, and Identity and The Rules of Insanity: Moral Responsibility and Mental Illness.John D. Lantos is Associate Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Do We Still Need Doctors? and coeditor of Primum Non Nocere Today.

• Acknowledgments ixIntroduction/ Carl Elliot 1Dr. Percy's Hold on Medicine/ Robert Coles 9The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes/ Ross McElwee 16Why Doctors Make Good Protagonists/ John Lantos 38From Eye to Ear in Percy's Fiction: Changing the Paradigm for Clinical Medicine/ Martha Montello 46Prozac and the Existential Novel: Two Therapies/ Carl Elliot 59Ethics in the Ruins/ David Schiedermayer 70Walker Percy and Medicine: The Struggle for Recovery in Medical Education/ Richard Martinez 81Now You are One of Us: Gender, Reversal, and the Good Read/ Laurie Zoloth 96Inherited Depression, Medicine, and Illness in Walker Percy's Art/ Bertram Wyatt-Brown 112Pathology Rounds with Dr. Percy: The Modern Malaise, Its Causes and Cure Brock Eide 134Walker Percy, Reluctant Physician/ Jay Tolson 150Afterword: Writing and Rewriting Stories/ John Lantos 160Contributors 163Index 165

“For Walker Percy’s fans and for readers who are just discovering his work, The Last Physician provides an explanation for why his stories were so seminal in the maturation of many an adult and many an aspiring physician. The issues he wrestled with in his fiction-isolation, ambivalence, alienation-are just as important in today’s society. The Last Physician is proof that Walker Percy’s work will endure, will continue to stimulate discussion, and will continue to inspire generations to come.” -Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner: A Doctor’s Story of Friendship and Loss “The Last Physician offers the pleasure of Walker Percy’s companionship in leading an examined life. The authors talk with and through Percy’s characters about medicine, about art and suffering, and about how their lives became richer as they acknowledge their share of the world’s troubles.”-Arthur W. Frank, author of At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness and the Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics