A Doctor All My Life

Medical pioneer, humanitarian, veteran, artist and doctor, Lewis Rathbun, beloved by his community as well as his patients, talks about life in medicine and life after medicine, public service, enjoying his family, retiring at the right time; and sharing his hobby and passion: painting.

Rathbun's medical career spans decades. Inspired in boyhood by a key mentor--his family doctor--and intrigued by the variety of factors affecting health in his family of origin, he decided at an early age to be the best physician he could possibly be. Receiving his medical school education at Harvard, he entered medicine before the antibiotic era and left many years later, having seen changes in every aspect of the field--including patient-doctor communication, female sexuality, group versus solo practice, many advents of technology, the proliferation of subspecialists and medicolegal considerations--which have evolved from the once rudimentary science of giving birth.

He conveys anecdotes of women he helped, saved or even tragically lost due to complications, while also elucidating the sociological changes he has witnessed during his career. He founded Life After Cancer, a program in Asheville, North Carolina, for teaching cancer victims to experience life at its fullest and in so doing, often ameliorate many aspects of their disease.

Lewis Rathbun's journey through life and medicine is one that takes us from the farms of Upstate New York to the battleships in the South Pacific, from Boston's halls of higher education and into the clinical settings of Western North Carolina medicine--where science and human spirit work ceaselessly together to bring life into the world safely and leave the world peacefully.