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Sat 11 Nov 2007Doctors' bodies of literary worksCulture Shock:The divide between art and science is being bridged by an ever fewer number of literary doctorsJB Lyons, who died on October 25th at the age of 85, was notable for two things he was and one he was not. He was both a distinguished consultant physician at St Michael's and Mercer's hospitals in Dublin, specialising in neurology, and a writer and critic, specialising in James Joyce. What he was not was all that unusual. Lyons, who explored the borderlands between writing and medicine with erudition and acuity, was part of a long tradition of literary doctors, and his death may mark the end of an era in which medicine and literature were not regarded as incompatible pursuits. If so, the result will be an impoverishment, not just of literature, but arguably of medicine too.