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The physician and best-selling author led the center for its first five years

Contact: Sheila Hotchkin, (210) 567-3026

WHAT: Abraham Verghese, M.D., physician, best-selling author and founding director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics, speaks at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

His talk, “The Pen and the Stethoscope,” is part of the 10th anniversary celebration of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics.

Dr. Verghese will discuss the connection between literature and medicine. Every illness is a story to be interpreted and decoded, and often patients, families and physicians arrive at very different readings. Being a writer makes it second nature to listen to the story and helps one see beneath the illness and disease to the fear, pain and anxiety.

WHEN: 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 11. Book signing and reception to follow.

WHERE: Holly Auditorium at the UT Health Science Center, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio.

WHO: Dr. Verghese is currently a professor of medicine at Stanford University. Previously, he was a professor at the UT Health Science Center, where he was recruited to lead the newly established Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics in 2002.

He is author of the best-selling novel “Cutting for Stone” and two memoirs, “My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story” and “The Tennis Partner.”

NOTES: Dr. Verghese’s is part of the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Lecture Series.

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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, one of the country’s leading health sciences universities, ranks in the top 3 percent of all institutions worldwide receiving federal funding. Research and other sponsored program activity totaled $231 million in fiscal year 2011. The university’s schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions and graduate biomedical sciences have produced approximately 28,000 graduates. The $736 million operating budget supports eight campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. For more information on the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit www.uthscsa.edu.