Of Guides and Guidelines

Samuel Johnson remarked, “The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.”1 Because medicine is at its most fundamental level a moral science of empiric technique leavened by humanism, doctors have similar aims for their patients—to better enjoy or endure life—especially in a pandemic. Dr. Alpert’s recent reflection upon the formative power of literature in the character of Dr. Rieux, a noble physician in Camus’s The Plague, led me to consider what literature and history have affected my nascent development as a doctor.