Striking memories of medical education: a glimpse of three physician writers.
Each of these three works focused on indelible memories of its writer's medical education. Thomas Browne spoke about autopsies, medical theories, religion. Tobias Smollett exposed the horrendous conditions aboard naval vessels and some of the problems facing young physicians. John Brown depicted surgery before anesthesia and antisepsis. Uniformly, the events and circumstances that seemed to have affected them were on the forefront of medical and social history. Religio Medici, Roderick Random, and "Rab and His Friends" were each the first major literary work of the authors discussed; each achieved instant success, yet somehow their popularity waned. Perhaps, the evolution of medicine has eclipsed what was once sensational, disturbing, interesting, and marketable, leaving only the dry and lifeless bones of stories--remnants of what once they were.
D004501:Education, Medical / Q000266:history*; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D008093:Literature, Modern; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D006113:United Kingdom