by Justyna Wlodarczyk About a year ago, I attended a lecture by a prominent expert in therapy dogs who used the term “emotional support animal” in his talk, accompanied by an image of a pig on a plane in the PowerPoint presentation. The mere mention of the term was enough to get the audience – […]
Category: Special Issues
Being Well Together: Human-Animal Collaboration, Companionship and the Promotion of Health and Wellbeing
by Robert Kirk, Neil Pemberton and Tom Quick This research forum is titled Being Well Together: human-animal collaboration, companionship and the promotion of health and wellbeing, It grew out a meeting at the University of Manchester in September 2018, supported by the UK’s Wellcome Trust. We invited academics working in disciplines across the humanities and […]
The Politics of Female Pain: Women’s Citizenship, Twilight Sleep and the Early Birth Control Movement
by Lauren MacIvor Thompson Thanks for reading “The Politics of Female Pain: Women’s Citizenship, Twilight Sleep, and the Early Birth Control Movement” in this month’s issue of Medical Humanities! If you are interested in the contemporary issues surrounding women’s health, pregnancy, and labor and delivery, this article will help shed some light on how we […]
Sophistry in American Medicine? Platonic Reflections on Expertise, Influence and the Public’s Health in the Democratic Context
by Evan V Goldstein So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time. However, should I transgress this Oath and violate it, may the opposite be my […]
From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to Absolute Dependence in an Intensive Care Unit. Reflections on a Clinical Account
by Tina Catherine Sideris This paper tells the story of one man’s experience of terrifying hallucinations and nightmares in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). His experience draws attention to the reality that intensive care treatment can cause emotional suffering severe enough to be identified as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At the same time this patient’s […]
Lessons from Frankenstein: Narrative Myth as Ethical Model
by Yvette Koepke In the past year, scientific breakthroughs have shown both how relevant the questions raised by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein remain, and how commonly the novel gets used as a reference point in ethical debate. A YouTube comment on a news clip reporting the first successful cloning of monkeys in a Chinese lab insisted, […]
Feet and Fertility in the Healing Temples: A Symbolic Communication System Between Gods and Men?
by Silvia Marinozzi Our contribution, Feet and Fertility in the healing temples: a symbolic communication system between gods and men?, aims at proposing a new interpretation of a traditional topic in the archaeological and historical medical studies. There are plenty of anatomical ex-votos of uteruses and feet found in temple repositories in Greece and Southern […]
Sensing Space and Making Place: The Hospital and Therapeutic Landscapes in Two Cancer Narratives
by Victoria Bates A Senior Lecturer in Modern History, Victoria Bates researches medico-legal history and the arts in medicine/healthcare at the University of Bristol. In this article for MH, she explores the role of “senses” in the construction and experience of “place,” principally by focusing on patients’ experiences of hospital care. By comparing two cancer narratives, […]
Genetics, Molar Pregnancies, and Medieval Ideas of Monstrous Births: The Lump of Flesh in The King of Tars
by Natalie Goodison What’s fascinating about this paper is that it’s a collaboration between geneticists and medievalists—and this very rich perspective led me to rethink what the Middle Ages considered fact/fictitious. It begins with a fictional story, within which a woman gives birth to a lump of flesh. When I first read about this lump, […]
Living Archives and Dying Wards: Reflections on Medical Archives in Eastern Africa
by Dr. Mika Marissa I am currently writing a book on the history of the Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI). I tell the story of how a small experimental chemotherapy research site established by the Makerere department of surgery and the US National Cancer Institute in 1967 remained open during a long period of political instability, […]