Miervalža Birzes kā ārsta tapums: Aksela Muntes memuāru lasījuma ietekme un pirmā saskarsme ar medicīnas darbiniekiem

Using the approaches of Latvian literary history, comparative literature studies, and medical humanities, the article examines the works of the Latvian writer and physician Miervaldis Birze (1921–2000) and the Swedish writer and physician Axel Martin Fredrik Munthe (1857–1949), which focus on the practice of medicine – the healing of human in the unity of spirit and body. Birze’s stories, especially “The Sandglass” (Smilšu pulkstenis, 1964), and Munthe’s “The Story of San Michele” (1929) are used as the basis, but they are also supplemented by biographical details about Birze from periodicals and by some of his stories on the themes of medicine, illness, or death; in Munthe’s case, also memories of the writer, drawn from his cousin Gustaf Lorentz Munthe’s (1896–1962) and baroness Gudrun Uexküll’s (1878–1969) “The Book of Axel Munthe” (translated into Latvian from English, “The Story of Axel Munthe”, 1953). The aim is to reveal Birze’s journey in the field of medicine and the image of a physician in Birze’s and Munthe’s prose not only as a figure who heals through medication but as a person who is also educated in the humanities, who does not deny advice to others, and who faces or is involved in ethically ambiguous situations. This study compares the actions of both medical practitioners. In particular, the physician’s experience of death is emphasised, which is universal. The main difference between the two authors is marked by the fact that Munthe has enjoyed classical European freedom and education without special restrictions and has travelled through many countries of the world, while Birze worked in the ideologically burdened, resource-deprived, often impersonal system of the Latvian SSR. However, this did not prevent him from retaining the qualities of a physician necessary for medical practice, which is also the goal pursued by the medical humanities. The depiction of Soviet medicine in Latvian literature has hardly been studied. While historians, including medical historians, have grown an interest in topics such as repressive psychiatry and folk medicine during the years of occupation, the portrayal of Soviet medicine in literature has generally not been viewed as a significant motif in literary texts. Medical humanities offer a rich, interdisciplinary prism for further research and can be utilised by medical sociologists, bioethicists, and other specialists, including literary scholars. For example, they can explore how public health policies are revealed in the lives of medical practitioners in fiction.