A few months ago I was raving about the prospects of a maritime history of medicine, the ship’s medicine chest being the focus of some of my latest studies. Since writing that piece, the Wellcome Trust and National Archives have completed the digitisation of the Royal Navy Medical Officers’ journals. The project, entitled Surgeons at […]
Category: Blog
Ayesha Ahmad: Hearing Voices; Illusions and delusions as God enters the doctor-patient dialogue
As medicine evolves, or rather reveals, nuances that speak of an inherent interdisciplinary nature, how are we to recognise and become accustomed with voices other than the language of textbooks; the sounds of monitors and machines; and the neutral tone of the doctor to patient dialogue? What happens when the patient hears God? […]
James Poskett: Medicine adrift at sea
You’re on board a small British merchant ship in the English Channel and you start to feel very ill. There’s no doctor on board. What do you do? If the year is 1844, you’re in luck. The Government has recently made it compulsory for all merchant vessels to carry medicines, to be kept in a […]
Ayesha Ahmad: ‘Medicine and Metaphors; Writing from the heart’
Since the time of Hippocrates, an ancient Greek physician, who is regarded as the “Father of Medicine,” medicine and the humanities have been interwined with all human beings in all cultures through a shared and common desire to heal. Sometimes though, the very fatality and mortality that gives rise to our existential meanings; our ethereal […]
Oncologist Sam Guglani wonders what medical care really means
Care infuses medicine. Well, the word ‘care’ infuses the language of medicine – Healthcare, Intensive Care, Palliative Care, Standard care, Standard of care, Best supportive care, Care Quality Commission. But what actually is medical care? […]
The Genie in the Syringe
Throughout the Christmas season, pantomime performances are one of the UK’s most favoured traditions. The pantomime has a long history with a genesis in Ancient Greek times. In our modern era, pantomimes are often adapted to feature contemporary twists and understandings about the unique and special meanings which have structured certain folk tales with a […]
’21st Century Medicine, Aristotle And The Church’ by Dr. Andrew R. J. Tillyard
I recently attended the funeral of the local parish priest and this led me to consider many of the similarities between what I do in medicine and the role of the ‘Parish Priest’ as well as the ‘misrepresentation’ of 21st medicine. I work in intensive care, a setting of immense emotional stress for patients and […]
Hearing Voices
Perhaps, one form of illness where telling a story of the body is most evident is in respect to mental health. Yesterday’s ruling by the High Court’s Court of Protection, that a 69 year old lady with severe schizophrenia must receive the medical treatment for a prolapsed womb, which she has been strongly refusing and […]
A Doctor’s Language
If it is true what the phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty says, then, “man is at home in language”. What are the implications for the experiences of patients, when a doctor’s mother tongue speaks from a two thousand year long tradition of medical descriptions since Hippocrates founded Western medicine. The reason I have begun such questioning is from […]
“A supremely worthwhile, if sometimes unbearably demanding job”: Ray Tallis on doctoring
I’d hazard a guess that no matter how much editors like to think that readers enjoy having their ideas and prejudices challenged, there’s nothing in practice that the average reader likes better than an opinion that chimes neatly with their own. Which, I’ve no doubt, is why I enjoyed reading Ray Tallis’s article in yesterday’s […]