Do art and misery share a bed? Although we might expect art to entertain and even, at a push, to improve its audience, artists themselves are surely supposed to suffer. […]
Columnists
Siddhartha Yadav: Is it time for a global health service?
“I want to live”, read the caption to the life-size photograph of a young man attached to the dialysis machine. I had seen this photograph at a hospital gate in […]
Liz Wager: Life in the fast lane
Has anyone ever studied why life speeds up the older you get? John Mortimer (in The Summer of a Dormouse – which should be required reading for any geriatrics rotation) […]
Anna Donald: How to behave with chronic, serious disease?
Latest dilemma: how to behave with chronic, serious disease? I’m finding it difficult to know how to present myself. I don’t feel like an invalid, whatever that means these days. […]
Richard Smith’s Miltonic torment – calling the NHS
I ring the Kent and Sussex Hospital to try and find out when my mother can expect to have her hip replaced. I’m worried that the hospital may have sent […]
Richard Smith: Get with Web 2.0 or become yesterday’s person
Web 2.0—the social web—has the potential to improve global health greatly and to solve complex problems in health science—as it has already done in particle physics. I heard this message […]
Anna Donald: Why cancer is humbling
I’ve promised to explain why advanced cancer is humbling. There are many reasons. […]
Liz Wager: Would you review a paper by your ex-husband?
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the revelation (from recently released official papers) that the UK Government wanted to suppress findings about the dangers of smoking because it was worried […]
Anna Donald: Science, a wonderful, slow tortoise
A few days ago, my scans came back. My liver looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Blobs, blotches, lines everywhere. Three weeks ago, it had looked quite neat. No longer. […]
Julian Sheather: Is depression a problem of meaning or of medicine?
In a recent article in the BMJ Paul Biegler returns to a familiar theme in some of the more reflective literature on depression. Should an episode of depression be seen […]