F.W. Peabody: Classic Articles

Francis Weld Peabody was a Boston physician who died in October 1927 at age 45 from gastric carcinoma. He was a humanistic physician whose article "The Care of the Patient" was published in JAMA in 1927 a few months before his death.

This article is one of the most widely cited publications in the medical literature. Two other of Peabody's articles are classics, however one of these has never been published.
 

Oglesby Paul's 1991 biography "The Caring Physician: The Life of Dr. Francis W Peabody is a classic but may be hard to find. Peabody's classic articles are found in the appendices to Paul's book.

For the readers ease, these articles will be linked here:

1. TheCare of the Patient.  FWP, JAMA 1927
This paper originally appeared in JAMA in 1927. It is as valid and inspiring today as it was 90 years ago.  It is the most cited and revered article in the medical literature. Peabody’s wife remembered him saying, “I am absolutely sure that this little lecture will be remembered long after anything of a scientific nature I have written has been forgotten.”

2. The Patient and the Man: (Presented by Francis W. Peabody, MD before the New York Academy of Medicine, November 22, 1922) 
Chemistry, physiology, psychology—these and other sciences are making the foundations of medicine stronger from year to year, but medicine itself can never become merely an applied science. The proper employment of the fundamental sciences in the study of disease has become an essential for good medical practice, but over and above this, there must be something which correlates the scientific findings with the actual problems of the individual case—the art of medicine, which carries us beyond the patient to the man.   

3. Notes on the Effects of Morphine (unpublished.  Finished 5 days before his death)

This unpublished essay is “[a]n example of how FWP the scientist used his

illness to make clinical observations on himself with his description of his reactions

to injections of morphine. This document was completed on October 8, 1927, five days

before his death, and is a unique and vivid record of one physician-patient’s response to the powerful narcotic.” This is an extraordinary essay. Why it was never published is a

great mystery tome; but may lie in the fact that morphine was and still  is a much-maligned drug. Herein, we see how it allowed FWP remain lucid and function masterfully until the his death.