This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (9)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

WILLIAM B. BEAN, M.D.

AMA Arch Intern Med. 1958;101(2):199-202.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In talking or writing about death we have a superstitious foreboding, handed down as an organic sense from all our ancestors, that the mere mention of death is a bad omen. It is as though we were attending our own funeral. Physicians have this trait in aggravated form. Some thoughts on death may be introduced by comment on a recent book dealing with death.¹ This book has a strong and sweeping indictment of the medical profession, but some will consider it instead an indictment of the central characters of the book. The charge against the medical profession is that physicians are unwilling or unable to deal honestly and frankly with patients who have a disease which is the equivalent of a death sentence. On the other hand, the fact that death came as it did to Charles Werbenbaker reveals the dangers of a do-it-yourself attitude to disease. Though it . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Iowa City

Footnotes
Submitted for publication Sept. 30, 1957.

Bill Castle, being one of the most alive persons I know, will not take it amiss that my only ready tribute on this occasion consists on some thoughts about death. I have tried to look at the problem without evasion and with the directness we have learned to admire as one of the many virtues of Bill Castle.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?