Anatole Broyard, Rosie and me

摘要

Anatole Broyard was a celebrated New York literary critic, who died from metastatic prostate cancer in 1992. He recorded his thoughts on his disease and experience in a collection of essays published under the title, ‘Intoxicated By My Illness’,1 which for some reason has just come to my notice. It is a gem of a book, and one essay in particular, ‘The Patient Examines the Doctor’, is so packed with observations—stimulating, provocative, mischievous and moving — that no doctor with a shred of humanity could fail to learn something from it.