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Death and Dying

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Literature and Medicine

Abstract

This chapter focuses upon the end-of-life, which is a significant, if rarely closely examined, part of healthcare. It offers two vignettes of patients and their families facing the end-of-life: one which describes a dying person and her family accepting the ways in which death and dying are part of a well-lived life, and another which describes the “frenzy” of a dying person’s family, which has not considered the place of dying in ongoing life. It also offers Leo Tolstoy’s classic account of The Death of Ivan Ilych and John Donne’s religious contemplation of death and dying, “Death Be Not Proud.”

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Bibliography

  • Broyard, Anatole. 1992. Doctor Talk to Me. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/26/magazine/doctor-talk-to-me.html

  • Edson, Margaret. 1999. Wit. New York: Faber and Faber. The film version by Mike Nichols, staring Emma Thompson, is also available.

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  • Schleifer, Ronald, and Jerry Vannatta. 2013. The Chief Concern of Medicine: The Integration of the Medical Humanities and Narrative Knowledge into Medical Practices. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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  • Williams, William Carlos. 1967. The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions.

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Correspondence to Ronald Schleifer or Jerry B. Vannatta .

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Schleifer, R., Vannatta, J.B. (2019). Death and Dying. In: Literature and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19128-3_14

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