SOURCE: "The Man Who Loved Women: The Medical Fictions of William Carlos Williams," in The Georgia Review, Vol. 34, No. 4, Winter, 1980, pp. 840-53.

In the essay below, Perloff examines psychosexual aspects of the doctor-patient relationships in several medical stories from Life along the Passaic River.

In one of William Carlos Williams' autobiographical sketches about the world of the big city hospital, a story called "World's End," the doctor-narrator recalls a particularly difficult little girl about six years old who was brought to the hospital kicking and screaming so violently that she could not be placed in a ward. The doctor decides to see what he can do: he takes the child to his office where she promptly bites him in the thigh, knocks off his glasses, and carries on like a wild little animal. Finally, not knowing what else to do, the doctor opens his desk drawer, takes out...