Jerome Lowenstein, a distinguished professor of medicine at New York University who in an artistic sideline helped found a literary journal and a small publishing imprint. The company drew book-world attention when it published a debut novel that won a Pulitzer Prize after being rejected by many other editors. Dr. Lowenstein died on Dec. 8 at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.

In his 1997 book, The Midnight Meal and Other Essays About Doctors, Patients and Medicine, Dr. Lowenstein wrote about the need for doctors to show compassion, which he defined in part as “the willingness to enter into a relationship in which not only the knowledge but the intuitions, strengths and emotions of both the patient and the physician can be fully engaged.” Teaching compassion is as important as teaching medicine, he wrote.