W. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.

9 RIDGE ROAD
RUTHERFORD, NEW JERSEY

March 7, 1942

Dear Carton:

Were I my own master nothing would please me more than to
play around with your gang as you suggest, just like that. It can't
happen. I'd far rather do that than have an official pay date with
the University but I can't do it, much as I regret it.

Perhaps I can help you start a discussion at your next
meeting by attempting to answer some of the questions your letter
has suggested to me : At the U. of P. where I was studying Medicine
I realized, during my Sophomore year, that I wanted to be an artist.
At the same moment I realized that by that desire, to be an artist,
I had appointed myself as a candidate for quick starvation since
my only reason for wanting to be an artist was to please myself at
such a level of living that there could not possibly be any susten-
ance in it. I had no desire to die for art. Nuts for that, I said
to myself. I wanted to live and to experience every "normal" phase
of living I could think of. I used the word normal in addressing
myself and neither drank nor smoked - as these things, I conceived,
would to some slight degree perhaps interfere with my most acute
perceptions. I decided to continue the study of medicine with a
completely conscious intention of using it to keep me fed and
supplied with the means of getting the things out of life that I
wanted. My chief intention and purpose became established, to be an
artist. I had absolute confidence in my ability to lick any possible
problem as to time or complexity life could present me with. I
thrive on the hardest kind of work - so long as I can do as I please
#on my own at some time during the twenty four hours.

Mind you, no lying was to be permitted. I was a physician,
the best. Nothing has ever been permitted to interfere with my
relations as between doctor and patient when I am on duty - which is
usually twenty four hours out of the twenty four. When I am called
I go, day or night, writing or not writing and I give everything
I've got - which usually means all I've got. My only restriction has
been never to let myself become too engrossed in the politics of
Medicine and never to permit myself to want to be a "successful" or
overworked doctor. I know I could have been anything I wanted to be
in Medicine. Nuts! Let 'em have it. As long as somebody else wants
it and can go get it my feeling is, That let's me out. I have some-
thin esle more important to do. That there are great physicians
all around me gives me a big laugh, I don't have to worry.

I am extremely useful to my community, where I# live. I am
proud of my ability and - I arrange my life so that I have time,
TIME! to write. I snoot the rich in my environment. Let them go
sell their papers, they can't tell me what parties to go to. I drink
my own liquor. I carefully arrange to be a Democrat in a Republican

W. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.

environment. I publicise my leftist leanings, I am not a member of
the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, nor am I a Mason. I got
to no church though I was reared a Unitarian. I chose Pediatrics
as my specialty because I enjoy children - and they don't talk too
much. I feel free with them, they don't pry into my mind. I might
have enjoyed being a Neurologist, my second choice, but there's no
use falling into the piano. I gave up painting, which I enjoyed, I
gave up the violin, which I never excelled at, I have never played
golf. I never go to a meeting of my county medical society - for
which I am damned. I have only two friends in the profession - so
to speak etc etc.

Thus, by never desiring to be anything but a good doctor,
an excellent physician who is keenly interested in the best
practice and in no way interested in Medicine as a lever to fame or
cash - except to the extent of giving me a livelihood and serving
my fellow man honestly and expertly - I earn TIME, TIME! to write.

I planned, deliberately, to quit Medicine at forty five
but I didn't figure on two wars. If I don't die first I still mean
to quit practice just as soon as it is physically possible to do so.
I have five major works all sketched out waiting to be labored over
or thrown into the ash can but I've got to have more TIME to really
do them. I know that now.

The mind's the thing, that and the desire. Fifteen minutes
is all that is needed to clinch a masterpiece. The first conception
of any work comes to me most often when I am most busy at my
practice. Work, hard work, relieves the spirit. The real working
brain, the unconscious leaps out at you if only you will give it
half a chance to assert itself unchecked and work releases the check
The back of a prescription pad is space enough for a telling note.
The ride in a car between patients is filled with imaginings and
the more familiar the route, the more humdrum, the more boring the
more the mind is released to its purposes. All day long I am writing
books, discussing proposals with men all over the world, fighting
their ideas or supporting them. And the strange thing is that this
rests me and makes me a better doctor than I could possibly have
been otherwise. Perhaps I should have said, Than I could have been
otherwise. Because I know that I am what I am, for better or worse,
and must live with myself as I am able. This way I work best. It
may be that when I come to quit Medicine this side of death I may
find myself hamstrung.

Oh yeah! like hell I will be. That's so much mush. I'll
be so busy at something else - and I hope it's writing - that I'll
never think of a case of pneumonia or typhoid again. Go thou and
do likewise.