William Wilkie Collins: la medicina como un medio para enriquecer la creación de la literatura de ficción

William Wilkie Collins (WWC) is a well-known prolifi c and innovator English writer of the Victorian age. After 150 years he is still being extensively read and all his main works are translated into Spanish. Furthermore, WWC has been acclaimed by famous writers such as JL Borges and TS Eliot as one of the best story-tellers of all times, and a master of the complexities of the plot of stories. WWC mentioned on his works many innovator aspects of medicine, demonstrating an uncanny power of observation and real interest in science. Notoriously, WWC described posttraumatic epilepsy, the clinical effects of opium, the introduction of people with sensorial defi cits, such as blindness and deafness, as main fi gures in his novels. WWC also showed an interest in the management of mental disorders and the use of music as a potential therapy. In this review, we comment these interesting aspects of the creative work of this genius of the fi ction literature. (Rev Med Chile 2011; 139: 1365-1369).