Article Summary by Dr Evie Kendal This work considers why research focused on ethical issues in science and medicine frequently draw on images and ideas from science fiction, particularly when discussing emerging technologies in reproductive medicine. It argues that science fiction stories can provide a useful starting point when thinking about technologies that don’t yet […]
Latest articles
Imagining the Postantibiotic Future: The Visual Culture of a Global Health Threat
Article Summary by Rachel Irwin We are surrounded by health data, which became even more evident during the Covid-19 pandemic. Each day, newspapers published graphs and heat maps showing new cases. It is was not only epidemiologists, virologists and policy-makers who were interested in data, but also the general public and social media users who […]
Hearing Spiritually Significant Voices: A Phenomenological Survey and Taxonomy
Article Summary by Christopher C.H. Cook When people hear a voice in the absence of any objectively present speaker, these voices are professionally understood as auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), but those who hear such voices do not see them in this way. We surveyed a predominantly Christian group of 58 people who reported hearing spiritually […]
The Heart in Medicine, History and Culture
The heart in medicine, history and culture [read the article summary] Therese Feiler, Joshua Hordern Sacred hearts and pumps: cardiology and the conflicted body politic (1500–1900) Therese Feiler The haunted heart and the Holy Ghost: on retrieval, donation and death [read the article summary] Joshua Hordern Heart surgery and transplantation: innovations impacting on concepts of […]
December 2021 Special Issue: Transplantation and its Imaginaries
Transplantation: changing biotechnologies and imaginaries Donna McCormack, Margrit Shildrick Hauntological dimensions of heart transplantation: the onto-epistemologies of deceased donation Margrit Shildrick The times and spaces of transplantation: queercrip histories as futurities Donna McCormack Faecal microbiota transplants: towards a healthy disgust scepticism Jessica Houf ‘Dirty pigs’ and the xenotransplantation paradox Gill Haddow May I have your […]
Infectious Disease Epidemics and Inequality
EIC Brandy Schillace Interviews John Wright On today’s Medical Humanities podcast, we have author, doctor and epidemiologist John Wright, director of the Bradford Institute for Health Research. You might know him for his books Magic and Medicine: Tales from a Rural African Hospital, or the intense Ebola Diaries, but today we are talking about his […]
Elham Shahin’s Recipe for Women’s Welfare and Social Reform
Khalid Ali, Film and Media Correspondent ‘Film Legends Among Us’ series The Arts Council of England’s model for measuring the impact of creative people encompasses three fundamental principles: actions, themes, and outcomes. Applying this model to the artistic career of the eminent Egyptian actress and producer, Elham Shahin, one can appreciate her influential position in […]
June 2022 Special Issue: Global Health Humanities
Global Health Humanities in transition Narin Hassan, Jessica Howell Sea of bodies: a medical discourse of the refugee crisis in Tears of Salt: A Doctor’s Story [read the article summary] Lava Asaad, Matthew Spencer Nations must be defended: public health, enmity and immunity in Katherine Mayo’s Mother India [read the article summary] Sandhya Shetty Xenotransplantation […]
‘Film Legends Among Us’: New Series in Medical Humanities Online Blogs
Brandy Schillace, Editor-in-chief, Medical Humanities Journal Lambert Wilson, French actor and musician, and master of ceremonies at his opening speech for the Cannes Film Festival in 2014 said: ‘The world is written in an incomprehensible language, but cinema translates it for us universally. Without its guiding light, each person would remain in isolated darkness’’. Medical […]
‘Creative Ferment’: Abortion and Reproductive Agency in Bessie Head’s Personal Choices Trilogy
Article Summary by Caitlin Stobie Using original archival research, this article examines representations of abortion in three novels by Bessie Head, an author who was born in South Africa and lived in Botswana for most of her life. I argue that Head documents both changing attitudes to terminations of pregnancy and dramatic environmental, medical, and […]