Peter Paul Rubens. Helene Fourment in a fur wrap (Het Pelsken). c.1635. Oil on panel, 176x83 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Do you ever really look at your patients? I mean really, really, look, so carefully that you’re in danger of making both of you feel uncomfortable? And if you do, do you look with the eye of a medic, seeking to confirm or rule out certain features, or do you look-as an artist might look- with an innocent eye, open to all possibilities and closed to none? 

If, like me, you take it for granted that artists have always been better than the average person at seeing what’s actually there, rather than what they are expecting to see, then  you might be surprised to read a recent paper in Medical Humanities by Abastado and Chemla which suggests otherwise. 

http://mh.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/2/84 more…

I’m grateful to Christy Henshaw for letting me know about an exciting new project from the Wellcome Trust. So far about 100 films from the Trust’s vast archive of film and video have been digitalised and can be viewed by anyone, free-of-charge, on-line. 

A brief glance at the titles led me to a fascinating insight into how the British Medical Association, in 1967, tried to engage with the public about growing concerns regarding childhood obesity. The way in which the issue of childhood obesity is framed in the film- including the language used and the overt and unashamed signaling that allowing a child to be fat both stigmatises them and threatens their health- will surely enrich the thinking of contemporary medical humanities scholars interested in the so-called obesity epidemic.

To see this clip click on the link below.

Cruel Kindness

The list of available titles in the Wellcome Library Catalogue can be seen by following the link below. This resource will shortly be available via Flash Player which should make access easier.

http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/search/a?searchtype=Y&searcharg=electronic+resource&SORT=D&searchscope=3&submit.x=30&submit.y=14

Full details, from Christy, follow.

more…

Vincent Van Gogh. Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889. London, Courtauld Institute Gallery.

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/artistBiography?artistID=301

This month the Mental Health Act (MHA) 2007 came into force in England and Wales. This Act, which amends the MHA 1983, is just the latest in a series of Acts of Parliament that form part of an on-going search for the fine balance between personal liberty and public safety.

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Healthcare/NationalServiceFrameworks/Mentalhealth/DH_078743

The language used in these various Acts, both in their naming and in the way in which the illnesses and disorders suffered by those falling within their remit are described and defined, is interesting. The Lunacy Act 1890 talks of “lunatics, idiots and persons of unsound mind”. The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 introduced safeguards to monitor what went on in what were then termed asylums. In 1959, with the introduction of the  first incarnation of the Mental Health Act, we see perhaps the first, modest, attempt to move away from the use of language that appears to blame and diminish those affected by the Act. more…

Jointly organised by the Centre for the History of Medicine at University of Glasgow and the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, Glasgow (a research collaboration between Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Strathclyde), this conference should be of interest to all medical humanities scholars.

http://www.sshm.org/confs.html

The focus of the conference is an engagement with historical perspectives on how health has been defined, by whom, and- importantly- the motivations and objectives informing these choices of frame. An important aim of the conference is to “engage with and critique ‘governmentality’ as a tool of analysis in the history of medicine.” The idea of medicine as an instrument of social control is of course familiar to social historians of medicine, and, as evidenced by conferences like this, continues to be both provocative and informative. By contrast, most doctors are likely to have never, at least knowingly, encountered this way of thinking about the nature and purpose of medicine. more…