[Pathology and pathologists in fiction revisited]

Pathology and pathologists are rarely the subjects of works of fiction. In the existing sources, the kind of representation naturally depends on the occupations and attitudes of the respective authors. The surgeon and gynecologist Carl Ludwig Schleich recollected Rudolf Virchow's free and easy handling of an autopsy assistant and his simultaneous understanding for a mourning husband. The dermatologist Gottfried Benn processed his disturbing impressions of pathology as an expressionistic dialogue between professor and students, with a violent ending. The writer and dramatic adviser Günther Weisenborn recalled unpleasant details about the autopsy course in his earlier medical studies, which he linked with individual views about the life of a deceased young woman. Praise, so to speak, to the dissecting pathologist have been sensitively written by the lawyer Maxence van der Meersch and by the surgeon Peter Bamm. Finally, the bestselling novelist Arthur Hailey gives an excellent fictional portrayal of the microscopic pathologist in The Final Diagnosis.