Among us, there are those who will not make it. Those who will contend with mortality, Wrapping themselves around it, Unable to let go. We watch them as prey through a sight. Cheer them as the mob below, Looking up at the man on the ledge. We are unsure what to hope for. We stand […]
Month: September 2011
James Poskett: Abandoning disease
Imagine you are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Your weight loss, lethargy and occasionally-blurred vision are all finally explained and your treatment, regular injections of insulin, prescribed. A month later you go back to your doctor. They open their clinical handbook, flick through the index and, rather unfortunately, ‘diabetes’ has been omitted from the latest […]
Ayesha Ahmad: The Story of Existence – Reflections on the 14th International Philosophy and Psychiatry Conference, Gothenburg.
Can you treat a person’s story? At present, amid the setting of the 14th International Philosophy and Psychiatry conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, I am not alone in trying to peer through the looking-glass, searching for the heart of the humanity in medicine, and for a treasure, that will surely tell us what we should find […]
James Poskett: Retrospective diagnosis – it’s not (all) bad
Did Julius Caesar suffer from epilepsy? Was Mad King George mad? Did Tutankhamun have Klippel-Feil syndrome? Retrospective diagnosis, particularly of notable historical figures, makes me feel uneasy. For one, it seems to fly in the face of contemporary historiography in which diseases are recognised as influenced by the social, historical and linguistic context. Even the […]