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 […]
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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 […]
James Poskett: Storytelling in the theatre
Telling the Patient’s Story details a theatre company’s attempts to develop medical students’ case presentation skills. Workshops, covering everything from improvisation, personal monologues and body language, had a marked effect on the students, with all participants agreeing that the training improved their delivery of patient histories. http://mh.bmj.com/content/37/1/18.abstract So, the arts and humanities can help medical […]
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 […]
Ayesha Ahmad: On ‘Mask:Mirror:Membrane’, an exhibition by Deborah Padfield
A recent viewing at the Menier Gallery of Deborah Padfield’s ‘Mask: Mirror: Membrane’ exhibition of images produced from experiences of facial pain, plunged my own experience into that of the perceiver of pain. In collaboration with Professor Joanna Zakrzewska, facial pain patients, and clinicians from UniversityCollege London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Deborah Padfield asked an […]
James Poskett: A poetic triumph over the X-ray machine
In what begins as an ‘unassuming extension of the ears’ and later develops into a ‘triumph over the x-ray machine’, Anne Merritt’s recently published poem, Stethoscope, neatly captures the development of a unique medical relationship that has little to do with patients: one between a doctor and the instruments with which she plies her trade. […]
Feel yourself slipping down that slippery moral slope? Then take our online poll!
The Editor’s Choice for the June issue of Medical Humanities is an original article by medical student Jason Leiboqwitz entitled “Moral erosion: how can medical professionals safeguard against the slippery slope?” Following his participation in a Fellowship at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics program, Jason concludes that physicians are as vulnerable to corruption of […]
Simon Callow in Being Shakespeare, Trafalgar Studios, London.
Living in a big city isn’t all fun and games. The number of young people killed and injured using knives and guns in London over recent years being just one, particularly disturbing example. But there is one huge advantage of living within travelling distance of many big cities, and certainly one like London: the positive […]
The Drama of Medicine: All the Ward’s a Stage: 2nd Annual Conference Student AMH 11th July 2011, UK
The Student Association for Medical Humanities is holding their second annual conference, so if you’re a student and interested in art, philosophy and literature, and how the arts and humanities relate to medicine, then this could be for you. The conference will explore all aspects of medical humanities and will give students the opportunity to present […]
MASK:MIRROR:MEMBRANE-A Deborah Padfield Exhibition, London 6-16th July 2011
Here’s one for your diary, an exhibition of images by Deborah Padfield, in collaboration with patients & clinicians at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, entitled Can you see Pain? Anyone who knows Deborah’s work from her previous exhibition and book entitled Perceptions of Pain won’t want to miss this. http://www.dewilewispublishing.com/PHOTOGRAPHY/Perceptions.html […]