If you’re looking for poetic material with medical themes, the pages of the journal Medical Humanities are a good place to begin. The publication regularly features medically inspired poems – turn for example to Volume 37, Issue 1, which features :
● ‘Stethoscope’ (by Anne K Merritt)
Here’s an extract :
“She has wandered with me
since my first days as a physician—
an unassuming extension of my ears,
gently slung about a tattered collar,
patiently transmitting rubs, rhonchi, rales,
as I struggled to decipher them.”
Many other poems are available to read in their entirety without charge – such as :
● ‘Eat more fatty fish’ (Adam Possner)
● ‘Arachnoid Mater’ (Adam A Dmytriw)
● ‘On Amyloid Protein’ (Danish Zaidi)
Others are for subscribers only, such as :
● ‘Cytotoxic Infusion’ (Adam A Dmytriw) and
● ‘Congenital Glaucoma’ (Richard M Ratzan)
Also see:
Stethoscopic investigations (part 1 of 3)