title: Literature and medicine.
abstract: There are various ways in which medicine and literature interact, but this paper concentrates on the contribution which literature can make to 'whole person understanding'. Scientific understanding is concerned with seeing events and actions in terms of patterns or similarities. But 'whole person understanding' is concerned with uniqueness or with what it is for a given person to have an illness. Literature can in various ways develop this kind of understanding.
authors.affiliation: Glasgow University.
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Downie
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D008093:Literature, Modern; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D009014:Morals; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D012942:Social Sciences