These editorials, mostly unpublished, generally have to do with health care or with healthcare reform.
Two of them feature a mythical healer named Malesh. The first, entitled “Visit From the Healer” was solicited from me by the editor of the Western Journal of Medicine and was published there as part of an issue dedicated to alternative healing, in June 1980. It is an allegory, intended to portray a style of medical care that could span the range from soup to nuts, including faith healing, herbal medicine, chiropractic, and what has come to be called “allopathic” medicine. It is a work of fiction, the only work of fiction published, to my knowledge, in that journal. Ever. The second, “The Healer Speaks at a Wedding,” was published in California Medicine, an informational newsmagazine for members of the California Medical Association, later in the decade.
Many of the other editorials are old, but even the old ones still often carry some bite into today’s healthcare reform debates and considerations. They are all dated for when they were written. They frequently reference an external work to which they are responding – for the most part I have not managed to connect the reader to those other works.