• Fiction
• poetry
• medical humanities
• medical education

When the captain “opened his word hoard” in Beowulf, all he did was speak.¹ We unthinkingly use words every day of our lives, yet through them we journey across time and distance, we are invited into the depths of mystery, and we can place our inmost thoughts before the gaze of others.

Fiction can offer graspable, comprehensible dynamic experience. We (particularly clinicians) understand and learn about others' lives in story form: patients bring narratives, clinicians create them, and help patients rewrite theirs. But life-as-it-is-lived does not happen in recognisable story form; it is confused, unfinished, and often with no satisfactory beginning. Stories are constructed out of experience, often over beer or coffee. Writers of literature create even more satisfying accounts than these.

Poetry offers concise and precise insight, using tropes such as metaphor in a way which no other written or oral form can. Fiction creates satisfying plot structure, rounded characters, effective description; it can leap over boring bits, tackle issues head on, convey multiple viewpoints, sidestep confidentiality problems, and offer readers the complexity of ambiguity: making them reach their own conclusions.

Fiction and poetry can offer reflections upon life. Characters, events and places must be taken seriously on many different levels, but not literally. Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters offers in-depth insight into suicidal depression: but it is a poetry collection not a case study.² Camus's La Peste (The Plague) is an excellent course text.³ But it can be read clearly as allegory, fable even: Dr Rieux would not work as a role model.

Literature is an essential study for medicine. It deepens the awareness of issues and of experiences one cannot, or will never, have. It offers first rate material for ethical study (ethical dilemmas often make a plot fizz). An understanding of narrative can …