Until recently, many in the Western world regarded medicine as a wholly scientific pursuit, separate from and even antithetical to spiritual and artistic concerns. Yet every physician who acknowledges uncertainity as a recurring factor in medical practice understands the fallibility of science and technology. This book explores the profound connections between medicine and poetry through the eyes of contemporary physician-poets. These 100 poems record instances of pain and recovery, joy and grief, humor and irony within the restricted society of caregivers and their patients. Throughout it is evident that medicine and poetry draw from the same deep well. At the heart of the medical encounter is the poetic act of witnessing an experience that cannot be fully expressed in scientific terms. Doctors and patients alike experience meaning in suffering and illness. In medicine and in poetry they find a network of healing symbols. -- Publisher description.