I'm almost certain this book was called 'The Touch', and it feels silly not being able to track it down when I actually know the title, but turns out it's just too vague a title and there are too many titles with the word 'Touch' in.
This book was about a doctor who develops some kind of magical healing power, that lets him heal anyone he touches from any disease, however serious. He can only do it at certain times of the day and eventually works out that these correspond to high tide. The drawback is that, every time he does it, it damages his brain a bit further. There's a scene where he's going through some interview with other doctors who are very concerned about how he's acting (I guess they think he's delusional or something) and, in the course of it, they test his clinical skills by asking him a question about how he'd normally treat someone with gout and he can't remember the name of the medication he'd use.
The Touch is passed on from person to person in some way. The book ends with the doctor losing his powers, and with us seeing a scene where another character in the story (whom I think had some kind of developmental disability) had now got The Touch, having received it from the doctor who originally had it.
The author had written several other books, some of which were under a pen name. I can't remember whether 'The Touch' was under his pen name or his real name. I do, however, remember another book I read by the same author under his other name, which wasn't SFF but might be something you'd recognise:
This other book was set in a medical school that offered full scholarships, but had strange entry procedures - the would-be students had to stay overnight at the medical school prior to sitting exams. The heroine, Quinn, is desperate for a scholarship but is initially turned down. Her rich friend, who's been given a scholarship, changes his mind about it after his father pays for him to go to the medical school he went to as a student, and the two of them cook up a scheme to make sure Quinn is the one to get the scholarship he's rejected. However, when she's at the medical school she starts noticing odd things and eventually discovers that there is some kind of plot going on involving the medical students receiving night-time brainwashing, which I think was so that they would prescribe particular medications and make a profit for the drug companies (who were paying off the medical school to do this). The point of the admissions procedure was to pick out the students who would be susceptible to the brainwashing techniques, and the reason Quinn initially failed was because she was immune to them. She and her boyfriend figure out what's going on and try to fight back.
So, maybe someone remembers that one (which would be even better to reread, actually) and from that I can get the author. Come to think of it, I know when I read the second of those two books as it was when I was at one particular job - it would have been in 1998. I know I'd read 'The Touch' before that, so they would both have been written before that.
This book was about a doctor who develops some kind of magical healing power, that lets him heal anyone he touches from any disease, however serious. He can only do it at certain times of the day and eventually works out that these correspond to high tide. The drawback is that, every time he does it, it damages his brain a bit further. There's a scene where he's going through some interview with other doctors who are very concerned about how he's acting (I guess they think he's delusional or something) and, in the course of it, they test his clinical skills by asking him a question about how he'd normally treat someone with gout and he can't remember the name of the medication he'd use.
The Touch is passed on from person to person in some way. The book ends with the doctor losing his powers, and with us seeing a scene where another character in the story (whom I think had some kind of developmental disability) had now got The Touch, having received it from the doctor who originally had it.
The author had written several other books, some of which were under a pen name. I can't remember whether 'The Touch' was under his pen name or his real name. I do, however, remember another book I read by the same author under his other name, which wasn't SFF but might be something you'd recognise:
This other book was set in a medical school that offered full scholarships, but had strange entry procedures - the would-be students had to stay overnight at the medical school prior to sitting exams. The heroine, Quinn, is desperate for a scholarship but is initially turned down. Her rich friend, who's been given a scholarship, changes his mind about it after his father pays for him to go to the medical school he went to as a student, and the two of them cook up a scheme to make sure Quinn is the one to get the scholarship he's rejected. However, when she's at the medical school she starts noticing odd things and eventually discovers that there is some kind of plot going on involving the medical students receiving night-time brainwashing, which I think was so that they would prescribe particular medications and make a profit for the drug companies (who were paying off the medical school to do this). The point of the admissions procedure was to pick out the students who would be susceptible to the brainwashing techniques, and the reason Quinn initially failed was because she was immune to them. She and her boyfriend figure out what's going on and try to fight back.
So, maybe someone remembers that one (which would be even better to reread, actually) and from that I can get the author. Come to think of it, I know when I read the second of those two books as it was when I was at one particular job - it would have been in 1998. I know I'd read 'The Touch' before that, so they would both have been written before that.
