Medicine at the Crossroads:
Marget, Madeline
Konner doesn't hint at this...
...He describes Sun City, Arizona, a retirement community where old MEDICINE AT THE CROSSROADS acle...
...what he thought about leftist politics, psychoanalysis in literary criticism, the Ziegfeld Follies, California writers, the FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE FRANCISCAN FRIARS tyranny of the IRS-and just about every AND SISTERS OF THE ATONEMENT artistic tendency and political pressure AND THEIR ASSOCIATES, that had an influence on the lives of his CONTACT: VOCATION DIRECTOR, fellow citizens...
...ill, says Konner, "by his own testimony "Where are the chaplains...
...shows that there isn't one simple way of mantic...
...Many of "us" are more than providers, policy makers, and consumers clusivism of the intelligentsia...
...While stressing the and usually enlightening...
...In his last years champions the yoking of the elitist's amFarrar, Straus & Giroux, $35, 968 pp...
...Your critics and cultural observers...
...Experimenting With a bluff disregard for the trendy and the fashionable, Wilson spent half a cen- with tradition tury telling intelligent general readers Since 1898...
...Though contrasting of extremes in order to make and possible solutions...
...low its computer and regard Wilson as a 1920s as a book reviewer, arts critic, and Wilson certainly does not come across as frill for highbrows rather than our twenpolitical journalist, Wilson built a career a haughty mandarin or a remote academ- tieth-century Emerson...
...willing to be well-informed about health Melvin Konner says we must be...
...Having heard more (Simon & Schuster...
...This thoughtful survey of and complexity of medical and social de- juxtaposition seems exaggerated, a mere health-care problems cision making are well presented...
...A rugged Wilson's unique way of balancing intel- local chain bookstore will probably fol"literary worker" who set up shop in the lectual elitism and populist outreach...
...To go from one side of life and then people, self-isolated from other generaThe Crisis in Health Care to see the other, it was actually beautiful,"' tions, are neglected when their diseases Melvin Konner, M.D...
...And the reading that lasted-with hardly a pause for ill- ic: in search of a "truly human culture," public today wants the autobiographer to ness or old age-until his death in 1972...
...Some of Konner's suggestions are less convincing...
...Konner is a physician, an anthropolo- looking at illness and treatment...
...He to solve the health-care crisis sometimes ernment...
...Once Nelson became amined his proposed solutions...
...He then cusses the tragic consequences of phar- contrasts Sun City to Clifden, "a beautiMMadeline Marget maceutical disasters like DES, and the ful old seaside town in the rolling Conquestionable wisdom of investing in lim- nemara countryside of County Galway," ited successes, such as AZT in the treat- with its aging population constantly monedicine at the Cross- ment of AIDS...
...The book's atwho smoothly leads the reader through times wonderful, but sometimes ephemer- tempts at breadth and conciseness lead to chapters covering doctor-patient rela- al, sometimes false...
...of the latter he mused, "Peculiar footlessness of ideas that pass through my head-importance of being somewhere where people are THE SIXTIES of revolution in To the Finland Station, the doing something...
...With a holy horror of The Last Journal, 1960-72 idea of Jewish righteousness in The Dead idleness and a fear inherited from his brilEdmund Wilson Sea Scrolls, the power drive in Patriotic liant lawyer father about "weltering around Edited, with an introduction and notes, by Gore, and the development of literary in a Dead Sea of mediocrity," Wilson Lewis M. Dabney symbolism inAxel's Castle...
...ly wants society to alleviate, and temperate AIDS epidemic...
...These are acpipeline of cultural reports: we still keep about the suffering of the Iroquois in New commodations that Wilson never prohearing from him every few years as journals, letters, and other posthumous works appear...
...convincing personal stories and explana- and its treatment is particularly good, es- However, this urgency leads to the greattory information, and negative and posi- pecially his discussion of the wonders of tive examples...
...The Sixties should be required David Castronovo move from an upper-middle-class boy's reading for politicians who talk endlessinnocence in pre-World War I Hill School ly about work and social stability...
...Konner explains the occasional omissions of relevant medical tionships, the history of medicine and its more rigorous kinds of evaluation, such or social facts...
...Konner' s and illness, and to cooperate in our care, York State, the absurdities of the Pentagon, strong feeling and conviction about how and we believe ourselves to be the gov- and the power mania of bureaucrats...
...Nelson said...
...He widespread health problems, such as ma- sion and acceptance of the mentally ill, and honors both scientific achievement and ternal deaths in childbirth and heart dis- Banaras, India, as a place where both docspiritual life, and sees social progress- ease, get much less attention and financial tors and family do all they can and then especially if it learns from and includes support than AIDS does...
...John and Princeton to perhaps the fullest account and Robert Kennedy both admired Wilson: Ir hese journals, skillfully edit- in American letters of an intellectual's ex- the latter read Europe without Baedeker ed by Lewis Dabney of the perience of modernity...
...28: 22 October 1993 Commonweal est problem I found in the book...
...He culreader...
...Tormented people need University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics...
...But Wilson has found precious few of America's greatest literary The Sixties is a good introduction to these public figures to read his books...
...He is psychiatric treatment and social life, ways they are to both medical treatment and sur- deeply distressed at the suffering he rightof helping the aged and dying, and the gical procedures...
...He complete turnaround-it was like a mir- chiatric floors of secular institutions, but is professor of English at Pace University...
...Konner, howev- DENNIS O'BRIEN is president of the James Nelson, a man suffering from er, does not seem to have adequately ex- University of Rochester...
...Konner says so, and the uncertainty er, and committed family members...
...the former gave University of Wyoming, are a civic duty to be fulfilled with clarity, can- him the Medal of Freedom...
...He's a good instructor, scientific medicine has effected are some- roads are also its virtues...
...He is the author of Cushing's syndrome...
...The book's great- forthright in criticism of antigay bigotry, a preconceived point...
...For example: God and the New Haven Railway (Beacon...
...engineered drug called mifepristone on empathy and acceptance...
...After receiv- than one psychiatrist ridicule and dismiss DAVID CASTRONOVO is author of a criting treatment developed by a drug com- religious belief, I suspect that it isn't the ical biography of Edmund Wilson (Ungar, pany scientist, "`His life was like a chaplains' choice to be absent from the psy- 1985) and other books of cultural criticism...
...Konner shares the are treatable, and tortured with end-of-life Pantheon, $23, 298 pp...
...He hated A SINGULAR AMERICAN expensive vacation resorts like Naples, Florida, and Jamaica...
...Nelsons' enthusiasm, but he also dis- measures that turn out to be futile...
...Each chapter includes Konner's description of mental illness in criticizing various methods of treatment...
...Nevertheless, his plea to involve people conGRACEFUL POLEMIC cerned with spiritual life in the treatment of diseases of the spirit is worthy...
...Similarly, an Italian est strength is Melvin Konner's clear pre- Konner also points out that other, far more town is presented as a model of compassentation of simultaneous realities...
...the last stand of one of dor, and thoroughness...
...he asks, speak- MADELINE MARGET, a regular Commonand that of his wife-his life had become ing of their absence, in his experience, in weal contributor, is the author of Life's Blood practically unlivable, their marriage little psychiatric hospitals...
...For him writing was on line at a polling place...
...It's a graceful polemic, a at Talcottville, New York...
...more than shared anguish...
...he wanted to be his sovereign literary self cut to the chase, provide the juice upfront, Not even death could seal off Wilson's while at the same time making points and edit out the undramatic...
...The cures The flaws of Medicine at the Crossgist, and a writer...
...irresponsible in accepting stimulant, and a contribution to the gen- enough away from literary Manhattan and what we, not doctors and the govern- eral medical education everyone needs in chic Wellfleet, his more official summer ment, must do...
...But tradition-as the basis for the prevention Crossroads is particularly strong when it these vignettes seem incomplete and roand cure of suffering...
...itored by a kindly GP, a knowledgeable roads, a companion to Often, doctors don't know exactly what nurse, an attentive home health-care workthe PBS series, is a to do...
...In the Epilogue he lambastes an jampacked with interesting information tivated many friends at his family retreat "us" for being infantile and unrealistic in and insight...
...Mrs...
...Medicine at the know when to quit with dying people...
...This mystified and an- order to become the good health-care residence, to allow him to escape the extagonized me...
...BOX 300, GARRISON, NY 10524-0300 ing array of broader concerns-the origins Commonweal 22 October 1993: 29...
...Konner doesn't hint at this possibility...
...always sought the opinions of ordinary translate into a judgmental flailing of the Still, Medicine at the Crossroads is workers and unglamorous locals...
...Part of this is the result of current practice, drug research and use, ge- as controlled testing and outcome studies, limited space, but Konner compounds netic research, surgery's rights and wrongs, that should be applied more widely than the problem by overgeneralizing...
...The stories are always antipsychotic drugs and the failure of delively-this is a highly readable book- institutionalization...
...here he was far our demands...
...O The modern intellectual's desire to connect ideas with the sometimes imperceptible events of family, neighborhood, and nation is Wilson's master theme...
...He also explored a daunt- GRAYMOOR, P.O...
...he exhaustively recorded his private life bition and the socialist's dream of fulfilland impressions: his mammoth journals ing labor...
...critical usefulness of scientific knowledge, REVIEWERS For instance, in "The Magic Bullet," the Konner emphasizes two other central com- WILLIAM F. MAY is Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., chapter on pharmaceutical remedies, ponents of cure: supportive communities, professor of Christian Ethics at Georgetown Konner writes about the impact of a newly and the spiritual life...
Vol. 120 • October 1993 • No. 18
