Professor Hassan Shehata is the current RCOG Vice President for Global Health. In this blog, he reflects on the RCOG’s role in eradicating Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), and launches a call for action by healthcare professionals and NGO’s around the world to stop all forms of gender-based violence including FGM. Introduction: about FGM When […]
Latest articles
Giuseppe Tornatore, A Master of Italian Cinema Constantly Reflecting on the Past
Film Review by Franco Ferrarini, Gastroenterologist and Film Reviewer ‘Film Legends Among Us’ series There is no future, Salvatore: only the past exists. (Quote from “Cinema Paradiso”) Giuseppe Tornatore is an Italian film director and screenwriter who, after the Golden era from the ‘50s to the ‘70’s led by Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti, restored […]
The Poet Who Conquered Malaria: Medical Humanities and the Public Understanding of Science
Blog by Dr Emilie Taylor-Pirie In the sweltering heat of British India, a doctor was working late one evening in his laboratory. His scalpel glinted with the sweat from his brow as he dissected his 1000th mosquito, gently separating the flesh of the thorax from the abdomen. He was tired, a little feverish, and about […]
A New Take on the Canonic Book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Book Review by Luxin Yin More than two decades after its publication in 1997, Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is frequently required reading in medical schools and used to train future practitioners on the importance of cross-cultural communication. The book concerns the difficulties faced by a young Hmong epileptic, Lia […]
The Transition from Abortion to Miscarriage to Describe Early Pregnancy Loss in British Medical Journals: A Prescribed or Natural Lexical Change?
Article Summary by Beth Malory “The transition from abortion to miscarriage to describe early pregnancy loss in British medical journals: A prescribed or natural lexical change?”, published in Medical Humanities in March 2022, investigates the origins of the shift from use of the word ‘abortion’ to ‘miscarriage’ in medical British English. Using the statistical technique Change Point Analysis, this […]
December 2022 Issue: Health Policy and Emotion
Health, policy and emotion Agnes Arnold-Forster, Michael Brown, Alison Moulds Women’s voices, emotion and empathy: engaging different publics with ‘everyday’ health histories Tracey Loughran, Kate Mahoney, Daisy Payling Pulling our lens backwards to move forward: an integrated approach to physician distress Sydney Amelia McQueen, Melanie Hammond Mobilio, Carol-anne Moulton Cicely Saunders, ‘Total Pain’ and emotional […]
Immersive and Interactive: Accessibility Theatre and LivingBodiesObjects
Podcast with Amelia DeFalco and Steve Byrne about Interplay Theater The Wellcome-funded project LivingBodiesObjects: Technologies and the Spaces of Health is currently partnering with Interplay National Sensory Theatre, an innovative theatre company that employs sensory engagement in ways that highlight the audience’s embodiment as much as the performers’. LBO and Interplay are exploring techniques and […]
Biopower Under a State of Exception: Stories of Dying and Grieving Alone During COVID-19 Emergency Measures
Article Summary by J. Cristian Rangel For Helen During the first waves of COVID-19, governments across the world enforced lockdown policies with the intention of protecting entire populations from infection and death. This was done under a climate of scientific and medical uncertainty about the infectivity and lethality of the novel coronavirus. Because these policies […]
‘The Time is Out of Joint’: Temporality, COVID-19 and Graphic Medicine
Article Summary by Sathyaraj Venkatesan and Ishani Anwesha Joshi The article theorizes the human experiences of time during the lockdown and COVID-19 pandemic through selected comics. This research discusses how comics can be used to communicate the passage of time and argues that the events of the pandemic have shifted our temporal experience from clock […]
Collecting Affect: Emotion and Empathy in World War II Photographs and Drawings of Plastic Surgery
Article Summary by Christine Slobogin Diana “Dickie” Orpen (1911-1987) and Percy Hennell (1911-1987) were both surgical artists who represented Second World War patients’ wounds and their reconstructive processes within English plastic surgery wards. The major difference between these two actors is that Orpen made drawings and Hennell took photographs. This article looks at the work […]