The charming physician (El médico encantador): neurological conditions in a short story by Silvina Ocampo

Abstract

If a sufferer from tactile agnosia is given an object familiar to him in daily life, he can indicate that it feels cold and smooth and heavy, but not that it is a coin.-Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 3The Argentinian author Silvina Ocampo (1903Ocampo ( -1993 (Figure) was born in Buenos Aires. It was there where she devoted herself to writing. Victoria Ocampo, her elder sister, was the founder of the renowned literary magazine Sur. Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares collaborated frequently in this magazine. In 1940, Silvina Ocampo and the latter were married. Ocampo masterfully practiced prose, poetry and translation 2 .Ocampo left us a vast body of works which are considered outstanding in many ways. Her literary quest was directed toward the act of finding meaning for that amorphous aspect of daily life that we often ignore. She shows us the marvelous and the terrible, not as part of the extraordinary incident, but rather of the Augustinian retirement of the very interiority 3 . In her youth, Ocampo studied painting in Paris with Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978 2 . The influence of this painter is patent in one of her poems entitled "Epístola a Giorgio de Chirico" (Epistle to Giorgio de Chirico), which was included years later in "Poemas de amor desesperado" (Poems of Desperate Love, 1949): "Lo que aún no pintó, para mí existe / con imágenes suyas en mis ojos" (What he had not yet painted, for me it ABSTRACTThe Argentinian author Silvina Ocampo left us a vast body of works which are considered outstanding in many ways. In 1960, she published a short story, entitled "El médico encantador" (The Charming Physician), in the renowned literary magazine Sur. The central character of this piece is a family doctor named Albino Morgan, who had a secret truth: in any house he visited, all variety of disease also entered. He brought with him the viruses he disseminated. The narrator of this short story-one of his patients-describes four of Morgan's diseases. These imaginary neurological conditions allowed Ocampo to explore improbable situations in everyday life.Keywords: neurology; medicine in literature; medicine in art; agnosia; sleep initiation and maintenance disorders RESUMO A autora argentina Silvina Ocampo deixou-nos uma vasta obra que é considerada excelente de várias maneiras. Em 1960, publicou um conto, intitulado "El médico encantador" (O médico encantador), na famosa revista literária Sur. O personagem principal desta obra é um médico de família chamado Albino Morgan que possuía uma verdade secreta: em qualquer casa que ele visitava, também entrava toda a diversidade de doenças. O narrador deste conto -um dos seus pacientes-descreve quatro das doenças de Morgan. Estas condições neurológicas imaginárias permitiu a Ocampo explorar as situações improváveis da vida quotidiana.Palabras-Clave: neurologia; medicina na literatura; medicina na arte; agnosia; distúrbios do início e da manutenção do sono