It’s the birthday of Dr. Michael Palmer, who began writing medical thrillers in the late 70s/early 80s almost therapeutically while fighting drug and alcohol addiction. While several of his books became bestsellers, he is probably best known for Extreme Measures (1991), which was made into a movie starring Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman, and Sarah Jessica Parker (1996).

Palmer was born in 1942 in Springfield, Massachusetts, studied pre-med at Wesleyan College in Middletown, Connecticut, and went to med school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He became an internist, and after a divorce and several knee surgeries in the 70s, became addicted to pain killers. He received probation and lost hospital privileges in 1978 for writing false prescriptions. He then began injecting Demerol, but soon after starting writing and drug treatment. His second published novel, The Sisterhood (1982), was about a secret society of nurses who engaged in mercy killing; the novel did well. Then came Side Effects (1985), about testing unapproved drugs on unaware human subjects, and then Extreme Measures, about a promising young doctor who SEES TOO MUCH (dun dun DUN) and gets himself in trouble with the evil elite conspirators doing mysterious unspeakable things at his hospital… (I haven’t read the book or seen the movie but I assume Hugh Grant is the promising young doctor and Gene Hackman is an evil doctor because Gene Hackman was born to play evil doctors. Correct me if I’m wrong.)

Palmer went on to write a total of 19 books while continuing medical practice as an emergency room doctor. (Fun fact: working in the ER gives a doctor more time to write than other types of practice.) He also worked to counsel and help other physicians struggling with substance abuse, becoming Associate Director of the physicians health program for the Massachusetts Medical Society. At the time of his death after a heart attack, Palmer had three sons and four grandchildren (he had divorced twice).

Palmer credited another physician author, Robin Cook, with inspiring him. Cook had been a classmate at Wesleyan, and in 1978 Palmer read his medical thriller Coma (1977). As his web site reports, Palmer said to his younger sister, “If Robin can write a book and has the same education as I do, why can’t I write a book?” She replied, “Because you’re dull.”

Sisters are great that way.

Have a bright, autumnal, fall-colors sort of day and stay scrupulously honest to the data.