TheDiscusThrower.ppt

The Discus Thrower
Richard Selzer
About the Author
● Richard Selzer
● 1928: born in Troy, New York
● 1948: graduated from Union college
Surgeon
Writer
As a Surgeon
● 1953: received from Albany Medical College
● 1960: completed a surgical internship and residency at Yale University
● Until 1985: remained as Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery
back
As a Writer
● 1973: Rituals of Surgery
( first collection of short stories)
● 1976: Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery
● 1979: Confessions of a Knife
( a collection of 24 essays, roughly half of which are surgical memories)
● 1982: Letters to a Young Doctor
● 1986: Taking the World in for Repairs
● 1990: Imagine a Woman
● 1990: A Mile and a Half of Ink (a diary)
Awards
● National Magazine Award
● American Medical Writer's Award
● Guggenheim Fellowship
● His articles have appeared in many magazines
About his Writing
● In 1991, he contracted Legionnaire’s disease but went on to document his recovery in Raising the Dead: A Doctor’s Encounter with His Own Mortality
● In his writing, he draws upon his experience as a surgeon, and as one critic points out, he “force physicians to think about the morality of medicine.”
This text is a piece of narration. The narrator, as a doctor, had a unique habit of “spying on” his patients for the sake of better medical treatment. He met with a particular patient who is blind and has amputations(截肢) of both legs. Though the patient is legless, he requires a pair of shoes everyday. He refuses his food and has a strange habit of throwing his china plate against the wall of his room. This caused a conflict between the man and the head nurse. Finally the patient died, and the doctor discovered that the man starved himself to death when he paid attention to the repeatedly washed place where the scrambled eggs dropped to the floor.
About the Test
What to think of this man, how to understand him, and how to treat him?
The image of the old man gives readers a stron