Physician writers are physicians who write creatively in fields outside their practice of medicine.
The following is a partial list of physician-writers by historic epoch or century in which the author was born, or published their first non-medical piece, arranged in alphabetical order.
Antiquity
Ctesias (5th century BCE) Greek historian St. Luke (1st century CE) Christian apostle
Middle Ages Avicenna (980–1037) early contributor to medical, philosophical and Islamic literature Al-Tighnari (fl. 1075–1118) Andalusian agronomist, botanist, poet, traveler, and physician. Yehuda Halevi (c. 1075 – 1141) Jewish-Spanish philosopher and poet Maimonides (1138–1204) rabbi, and philosopher in Andalusia, Morocco and Egypt
15th century
Adam of Łowicz (also known as Adamus Polonus; died 1514) was a professor of medicine at Poland's Kraków Academy, its rector in 1510–11, royal court physician, a humanist, writer and philosopher. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) was an Italian Platonist philosopher, physician, and writer. A patron of Cosimo de' Medici, Ficino was a key cultural figure in the Florentine Renaissance. Biernat of Lublin (1465–1529) was a Polish poet, fabulist and physician. He was one of the first Polish-language writers known by name, and the most interesting of the earliest ones. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) was a Polish mathematician, astronomer, physician, classical scholar, translator, Catholic cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist, best known for his epoch-making book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Girolamo Fracastoro (Fracastorius; 1478–1553) Italian scholar (in mathematics, geography and astronomy), poet and atomist; as a physician, he proposed ideas very similar to the germ theory of disease. Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss-born botanist, alchemist, occultist. François Rabelais (1483–1553) French satirist and author of The Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
16th century
Luis Barahona de Soto (1548–1595), Spanish poet admired by his contemporary, Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Jan Brożek (Broscius, 1585–1652), Polish mathematician, astronomer, physician, poet, writer, musician, rector of the Kraków Academy Thomas Campion (1567–1620) English composer and poet William Gilbert (1544–1603) English natural philosopher Jacques Grévin (c. 1539 – 1570) French dramatist Arthur Johnston (1587–1641) Scottish poet Thomas Lodge (c. 1558 – 1625) English dramatist and writer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods; best remembered as the author of Rosalynde, on which Shakespeare based As You Like It Sebastian Petrycy of Pilzno (1554–1626) was a Polish philosopher and physician.Petrycy Sebastian, Encyklopedia Polski (Encyclopedia of Poland), Kraków, Wydawnictwo Ryszard Kluszczyński, 1996, , p. 496. Michael Servetus (1511–53), Spanish theologian, cartographer, humanist; the first European to describe pulmonary circulation; burned at the stake, for his religious views, in John Calvin's Geneva. Andreas Vesalius (1514–64) Belgian anatomist, author of De humani corporis fabrica
17th century
Patrick Abercromby (1656 – c. 1716) Scottish antiquarian, noted for being physician to King James VII (II of England) John Arbuthnot (1667–1735) one of Queen Anne's physicians and an associate of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope in the Scriblerus Club Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) British writer with mastery in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric.Keith Thomas, "The Greening Genius of Thomas Browne", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXII, no. 16 (22 October 2015), pp. 67–69. Samuel Garth (1661–1719) British author and translator of classics Paul Fleming (1609–1640) was a lyricist he stood in the front rank of German poets Giulio Mancini (1559–1630) papal physician, art collector, and author of treatises on painting, nobility, dancing, government, and health Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) Dutch philosopher, political economist and satirist who lived most of his life in England and used English for most of his published works; became famous (or infamous) for The Fable of the Bees Francesco Redi (1626–97) Italian poet, best known work being Bacchus in Tuscany Angelus Silesius, né Johannes Scheffler (1624–77) German mystic and poet who wrote the lyrics to many Christian hymns Henry Vaughan (1622–1695) Welsh metaphysical poet John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher, father of liberalism and one of the most influential thinkers.
18th century
Mark Akenside (1721–1770) English poet and physician, known for his poem The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744) Julije Bajamonti (1744–1800) Serbian writer and physician. Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) British poet, grandfather of Charles Darwin James Grainger (1721–66) poet from a Cumberland family; friend of Dr. Johnson Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74) Anglo-Irish writer and poet known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) Albrecht von Haller (1708–77) Swiss anatomist, physiologist, naturalist and poet Edward Jenner, FRS, (1749–1823) famous for introducing the smallpox vaccine; also a poet of some note Johann Heinrich Jung (1740–1817) German author, best known by his assumed name, Heinrich Stillin; friend of Goethe John Keats (1795–1821) one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement who influenced poets such as Alfred Tennyson immenselyW Osier, John Keats–the apothecary poet, Johns Hopkins Husp Bull 7 (1896), pp. 11–16. Justinus Andreas Christian Kerner (1786–1862) German poet who, along with Ludwig Uhland, established the Swabian group of Romantic poets; some of his poems were set to music by Robert Schumann Jean-Paul Marat (1743–93) Swiss-born French philosopher, political theorist and scientist best known as a radical journalist and politician from the French Revolution; stabbed to death in his bathtub by the Girondin sympathizer Charlotte Corday and memorialized in Jacques-Louis David's 1793 painting, The Death of Marat John Kearsley Mitchell (1798–1858) American writer, father of S. Weir Mitchell David Macbeth Moir (1798–1851) Scottish writer; a contributor of both prose and verse to the magazines, and particularly, with the signature of Delta, to Blackwood's Magazine Mungo Park (1771–1806) Scottish explorer of the African continent Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869) creator of the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (Roget's Thesaurus) Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) German writer, poet, essayist and dramatist; friend of Goethe. He was an army surgeon before achieving fame as a writer. Tobias Smollett (1721–71) Scottish author, known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748); best known work is The Expedition of Humphry ClinkerThe San Antonio College LitWeb Tobias Smollett Page
19th century
Carl Ludwig Emil Aarestrup (1800–1856) Danish erotic poet Mariano Azuela (1873–1952) Mexican physician in Pancho Villa's army; in 1949 he received a National Prize for Literature Doris Bell Ball (1897–1987) wrote under the pseudonym "Josephine Bell"; a British detective novelist who wrote more than forty books; a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association Pío Baroja y Nessi (1872–1956) Spanish writer, one of the key novelists of the Generation of '98; admired by Hemingway Nérée Beauchemin (1850–1931) Québécois poet who attempted to produce a national literature Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849) English poet and dramatist whose central theme was death Gottfried Benn (1886–1956) German essayist, novelist and expressionist poet Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, (1844–1930) English poet, the only physician to hold the honour of poet laureate (1913) Georg Büchner (1813–1837) German dramatist and writer of prose Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899) German philosopher and physiologist who became one of the exponents of 19th century scientific materialism Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) Russian novelist and playwright; author of The Master and Margarita Hans Carossa (1878–1956) German novelist and poet, known mostly for his autobiographical novels, and his innere Emigration (inner emigration) during the Nazi era. Louis-Ferdinand Céline pen name of French writer Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (1894–1961) developed a new style of writing that modernized both French and World literature Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) celebrated Russian short-story writer and playwrightAnton CHEKHOV Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) British author of Sherlock Holmes fame A.J. Cronin (1896–1981), Scottish novelist and essayist; creator of Dr. Finlay. Other works include The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, and The Keys of the Kingdom. The Citadel (1937) brought much-needed attention to inequities in the British medical system and is credited with having prompted the creation of Britain's National Health Service. Géza Csáth (né József Brenner) (1887–1919) Hungarian writer, playwright, musician, music critic and psychiatrist Warwick Deeping (1877–1950) prolific English novelist and short story writer; most famous novel is Sorrell and Son (1925) Júlio Dinis, pseudonym of Joaquim Guilherme Gomes Coelho (1839–1871) was a Portuguese doctor and writer. Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) was a German novelist, essayist, and doctor, best known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929). Vladan Đorđević (1844–1930) William Henry Drummond (1854–1907) Irish-Canadian poet of the habitant Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) French author who, in 1920, published Confession de minuit featuring the anti-hero Salavin; in 1935, elected member of Académie Française Havelock Ellis (1859–1940) British writer and poet, author of The Psychology of Sex Rudolph Fisher (1897–1934) African-American writer who was an active participant in the Harlem Renaissance, primarily as a novelist, but also as a musician R. Austin Freeman (1862–1943) British writer of detective stories, most featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr Thorndyke. He invented the inverted detective story Harriet E. Garrison (1848–1930), American physician, writer Elmina M. Roys Gavitt (1828–1898), American physician; medical journal founder, editor-in-chief William Gilbert (author) (1804–1890) English author and father of W. S. Gilbert Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878–1957) Irish ear surgeon, one of the most prominent Dublin wits and best known as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel Ulysses Enrique González Martínez (1871–1952) Mexican poet and diplomat, considered to be primarily Modernist in nature, with elements of French symbolism Thomas Gordon Hake (1809–1895) English poet, intimate member of the circle of friends and followers of Rossetti William Alexander Hammond (1828–1900) pioneering American neurologist and the Surgeon General of the United States Army during the American Civil War Henry Head (1861–1940) English neurologist who conducted pioneering studies on the somatosensory system and sensory nerves. Much of this work was conducted on himself, in collaboration with the psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) one of the best regarded American poets of the 19th century; helped found the literary magazine The Atlantic Monthly, his collected essays published as The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, highly popular in its day Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974) poet and a founder and historian of Dada. Jovan Jovanović Zmaj (1833–1904) poet and physician David H. Keller (1880–1966) (most often published as David H. Keller, MD, but also known by the pseudonyms Monk Smith, Matthew Smith, Amy Worth, Henry Cecil, Cecilia Henry and Jacobus Hubelaire); a writer for pulp magazines in the mid-20th century who wrote science fiction, fantasy and horror. Arabella Kenealy (1859–1938), English graduate of the London School of Medicine for Women, she practiced medicine in London and Watford (1888–1894)and authored many works of fiction, including the novel Dr. Janet of Harley Street (1893).