ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: MEDICINE
* = Widely available text. No * means you may need Interlibrary Loan. Check
college
and city library card catalogues.
Donner, Gail, et al. Towards an Understanding of Nurses' Lives : Gender, Power, and Control.
Toronto: University of Toronto, Faculty of Nursing, 1994.
Comment: Not
dealing with fiction, but this book provides a window on issues of nursing and control
that
surface in novels such as Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Students of nursing may also use
"The Yellow Wall-paper" as an illustration of conditions of home nursing care
from the 1890s.
"The Yellow Wall-paper" story is in our textbook. This is a reader with critical help added.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader : The Yellow Wallpaper, and
other Fiction. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
Comment: Gilman's
story used to be studied as a horror story because of a supernatural element., But
feminists have changed this to a story about the medical maltreatment of women in the late
19th C. An
interesting approach would be to get out old collections that discuss the story as a ghost
or horror story.
Then track when the comments changed and this story began being introduced as a feminist
story of
female oppression.
* Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms.
New York: Scribner, 1929.
Comment:
This novel has a nursing sub-plot. A Film has been made. The role of the nurse
could be compared
from text to film. Students may reflect upon Hemingway's use of nurses as
characters. Are they stereotypes? Do nurses represent one model of
woman. What are some other roles of women in Hemingway? Students may
scan Hemingways' short stories for nurse characters and compare these.
* Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, a Novel.
New York: Viking Press, 1962.
Comment: Psychiatric hospital patients -- Fiction.
This novel details the
massive hospitalization of patients at mid-20th C. Students might want to use this
novel as a comparison with novels written about the homeless mentally ill, roaming the
streets since this time.
The two conditions of
the mentally ill may be compared as a thematic comparison. Comparisons of
character may examine the role of nursing staff and community mental health professionals.
How does this
story compare with "The Yellow Wall-paper's" depiction of nursing and medical
care?
Melosh, Barbara. American Nurses in Fiction : an Anthology of Short Stories.
New York: Garland, 1984.
Comment:
Comparing the stories in this collection with the issues raised in Donner et al's study
above can
carry over to writing in the career field or academic disciplines.
* Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago.
New York: New American Library, 1958.
Comment
Yuri Zhivago, doctor and poet, lives and loves during the first three decades of
20th-century Russia. How is the doctor represented? Is this portrait
stereotypical? Where does the doctor fit into society? Students
might compare the role of the doctor in this text with one other.
Selzer, Richard. The Doctor Stories.
New York: Picador, 1998.
Comment: A
novella, stories and essays. The novella, Avalanche, which is set in Argentina, is on a
city woman's doomed romance with a gaucho, while in Whither Thou Goest a wife makes a gift
of her dead husband's
body parts, the story based on the author's experience as a surgeon.
Shreve, Susan Richards. The Visiting Physician.
New York: N.A. Talese, 1996.
Comment: Novel deals with themes of city and town life, sick children, missing children.
Compare this physician with others in the list.