SOURCE: Metzl, Jonathan M. “Signifying Medication in Thom Jones's ‘Superman My Son.’” In Teaching Literature and Medicine, edited by Anne Hunsaker Hawkins and Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, pp. 338-43. New York: Modern Language Association, 2000.

In the following essay, Metzl presents theoretical aspects of Jones's short story “Superman My Son” to examine pharmacology.

Medications are frequently presented in medical education in a fixed and denotative manner. In pharmacology courses, for example, students are responsible for digesting massive amounts of information concerning every aspect of a medication's profile, ranging from its half-life to its mechanism of action to its clinical indications. These and other details are often given as facts to be memorized and then reproduced on fill-in-the-bubble, multiple-choice examinations. In the process students learn to master “the latest, most authoritative drug information possible,” to quote the Physicians' Desk Reference (1). Lithium alters sodium transport in nerve and muscle cells and effects...