Poetry and medicine: healing for the healer. A call for a literary supplement.

I was delighted to read an article by a Professor Miles Little in the excellent new section of the Internal Medicine Journal called ‘Outside the Square’,1 the title of which reminded me of the cartoon ‘The Far Side’. I had visions of cows standing up making clever ‘oneliners’ to each other. These musings aside, his article was about, of all things, poetry. At first, I could not believe it ... and in an Australian medical journal. There has arrived finally a breath of fresh air in this emotionally rarefied atmosphere of scientific medicine.