Ear­li­er this week, Bruce J. Hill­man shared the sto­ry behind writ­ing The Man Who Stalked Ein­stein. He is blog­ging here all week as part of the Vis­it­ing Scribe series on The ProsenPeo­ple.

In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, William Car­los Williams, the part­ly Jew­ish Amer­i­can physi­cian and poet large­ly respon­si­ble for rethink­ing how we define poet­ry, asked him­self rhetor­i­cal­ly: How do you do it? How can you car­ry on an active busi­ness… and at the same time find time to write?” 

One occu­pa­tion, com­ple­ments the oth­er,” he explained. They are two parts of a whole… that it is not two jobs at all, that one rests the man when the oth­er fatigues him.”

Williams was ver­bal­iz­ing what many Jew­ish physi­cians have expe­ri­enced over the cen­turies. From the Hel­lenic Jew­ish physi­cian, Luke — whom some cred­it with writ­ing the epony­mous New Tes­ta­ment Gospel— to the many con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish physi­cians who write because some inner voice tells them they must, med­ical doc­tors have found the ener­gy to both pur­sue busy prac­tices and write and pub­lish lit­er­ary works.

I count myself among them. As a Jew, a uni­ver­si­ty physi­cian, and a com­mer­cial­ly pub­lished author, I ben­e­fit not only from the respite writ­ing pro­vides but from how my two inter­ests pro­ceed in par­al­lel, each inform­ing the oth­er. A thought­ful physi­cian is not sim­ply a stu­dent of health and dis­ease. His expe­ri­ences prac­tic­ing med­i­cine teach him to think beyond his five sens­es to arrive at new insights that can inform the thoughts and actions of his lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. In turn, putting words to a page clar­i­fies his think­ing and enhances his empa­thy for the human con­di­tion, ben­e­fit­ting both him­self and his patients. 

My Jew­ish upbring­ing and my train­ing as a physi­cian pow­er­ful­ly influ­ence what I choose to write about and how I exe­cute my thoughts. My first effort at cre­ative non­fic­tion, The Man Who Stalked Ein­steintells the true sto­ry of Philipp Lenard, a Nobel Prize win­ning physi­cist whose jeal­ousy of Albert Einstein’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, fear of being ren­dered incon­se­quen­tial by Einstein’s new physics, and rabid anti-Semi­tism led to his hound­ing Ein­stein out of Ger­many and spear­head­ing the dis­missal of Jew­ish pro­fes­sors from Ger­man universities. 

My sec­ond book, ten­ta­tive­ly titled A Plague on All Our Hous­es, is to be released by ForeEdge Press in the fall of 2016. Plague fol­lows the med­ical career of Dr. Michael Got­tlieb from 1981 — when he dis­cov­ered the dead­ly new dis­ease, AIDS — through 1987, when a Job-like con­flu­ence of adver­si­ties forced him from aca­d­e­m­ic prac­tice. Gottlieb’s ear­ly med­ical celebri­ty, car­ing for the AIDS-afflict­ed Rock Hud­son, and co-found­ing amfAR with Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor brought him into con­flict with his imme­di­ate supe­ri­ors and put him at odds with the rul­ing con­ser­vatism of that era. As such, the book is an instruc­tive tale of envy, ambi­tion, and the per­ils of fight­ing a pow­er­ful system.

Writ­ing and med­ical prac­tice. It is not a ques­tion of choos­ing between one or the oth­er. Those who hear the call, must choose to pur­sue both.

Bruce Hill­man is Pro­fes­sor of Radi­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia and Edi­tor-in-Chief of the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Radi­ol­o­gy. He has pub­lished eight short sto­ries and the 2010 book for lay read­ers, The Sorcerer’s Appren­tice: How Med­ical Imag­ing is Chang­ing Health Care.

Relat­ed Content:

Bruce Hill­man is Pro­fes­sor of Radi­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia and Edi­tor-in-Chief of the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Radi­ol­o­gy. He has pub­lished eight short sto­ries and the 2010 book for lay read­ers, The Sorcerer’s Appren­tice: How Med­ical Imag­ing is Chang­ing Health Care. The Man Who Stalked Ein­stein is his first non-med­ical book.