Intoxicated by My Illness: And Other Writings on Life and Death

Abstract

But you do not die of being sick, you die of being alive. Death kills you well enough without the help of illness. And illnesses have put off death for some, who have lived longer for thinking that they were on their way out and dying. Furthermore, there are diseases, as there are wounds, that are medicinal and salutary.¹ —Montaigne Anatole Broyard was an editor, a literary critic, and an essayist for the<i>New York Times</i>for 40 years. He was also the Montaigne of lay medical writers. Illness and death interested him deeply. In 1954, he wrote a moving personal account of his father's last illness and death, "What the Cystoscope Said." Thirty-five years later, he wrote eloquently about his own final confrontation with prostate cancer and impending death. His wife, Alexandra Broyard, has compiled this collection of his medical writings. Three of the six essays are particularly