The Doctor and the "Delta Factor": Walker Percy and the Dilemma of Modern Medicine

Abstract

As medical science progresses, a tension has developed between the art of medicine, which deals with patients as individual persons, and the science itself, which focuses on the objective pathology.This tension is furthered as medicine identifies itself increasingly with science. To explore the consequences of this unbalanced identification, and the strain it places on the physician-patient relationship, this article examines the thought of Walker Percy, and in particular his novel The Second Coming. In this novel, Percy, a physician by training, presents a case of a patient suffering at the hands of medicine-turned-reductionist. The novel highlights the breakdown of communication between physician and patient within modern medicine, and raises important questions about how to best understand, and thereby preserve, medicine's true art.

Philosopher of Precision and Soul: Introducing Walker Percy

“…Walker attended medical school at Columbia University in New York, specializing in pathology. It has been said that he chose pathology on the grounds that he preferred not to have contact with patients (Majeres ). As my colleague Professor David Hardwick, himself a distinguished pathologist, often jokingly says, “My patients don't complain.” Another interest of Walker's was psychiatry.…”

Searching for Meaning with Victor Frankl and Walker Percy

“… 6. Although not directly addressed here, Percy saw scientism—unbalanced faith in science to disclose the truth of reality, often motivating modern medicine—to blame for displacing traditional Christianity and committing “spiritual suicide” (Majeres 2002; Michel 2011). A materialistic worldview married to American moralism has made today an “age of suicide” (Percy 1983; Desmond 2005, 61).…”