ABSTRACT
In December 1936 and January 1937, Earle Parkhill Scarlett (1896–1982) published a two-part article, meticulously researched, called ‘Medicine and Poetry’. Outwardly, the article catalogues physicians who were also major or minor poets. But read closely, Scarlett’s glosses on such poets reveal an uncanny psychological insight into a form of sensibility. Physicians educated in reading the body could also read the world. In other words, they were experts in close noticing, and their medium for such sensate work was the abstraction of the metaphor. Scarlett introduces his article thus: ‘at first glance, at least to modern eyes, any attempt to relate poetry and medicine appears to be almost an absurdity, a straining of the laudable practice of comparison beyond rational limits.’ However, as Scarlett notes, ‘Science and poetry . . . truly dwell together’.
