Book review by Katherine D. Van Schaik Vivian Nutton. Renaissance Medicine: A Short History of European Medicine in the Sixteenth Century. Routledge, 2022. Vivian Nutton’s comprehensive Renaissance Medicine: A Short History of European Medicine in the Sixteenth Century, written largely during the pandemic, provides an overview of a century of medical transformations in Europe. Nutton […]
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Scattered Limbs: A Medical Dreambook
Book Review by Neil Vickers Iain Bamforth is a physician-writer who tries to understand his life in terms of philosophy, literature, history and art. He is stupendously well-read in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish sources, which he deploys to beguiling effect in this strange and magnificent book. In a ‘Preface’ to Scattered Limbs, Bamforth […]
Families in Crisis, Futures on the Fence
Film Review by Professor Robert Abrams, Professor of Psychiatry, Weill-Cornell Medicine, New York Life Suits Me Well, directed by Mohamed Ulad-Mohand (Morocco, France, 2021) The title of the Moroccan film Life Suits Me Well (a translation of the original French La Vie Me Va Bien) is heavily weighted with irony. Despite its hopeful-sounding title, the […]
The Doctor as Humanist: Humanism In Surgery Symposium Announcement
Symposium Announcement CFP – The Doctor As Humanist Visit the event website by following this link: Event Website Medical humanities have been rising all over the world due to the challenges posed by scientific and technological advancements that provide us with the means to treat, cure and prolong life, but not necessarily with person-centred care. […]
Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada
Book Review by Philip B. Berger Shaheen-Hussain, Samir. Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada. Foreword by Cindy Blackstock, afterword by Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel. McGill-Queen’s Indigenous and Northern Studies Series, 2020. Samir Shaheen-Hussain, a pediatric emergency physician, does not hold back in his historical scholarship detailing the pain […]
Grief Connects Us: A Neurosurgeon’s Lessons on Love, Loss, and Compassion
Book Review by Jeffrey M. Brown Stern, Joseph D. Grief Connects Us: A Neurosurgeon’s Lessons on Love, Loss, and Compassion. Central Recovery Press, 2021. Joseph Stern’s recent book, Grief Connects Us, opens with a study in contrasts. “My younger sister was an actress,” Stern writes. She was creative, trusting, warm, an engaged wife and […]
Movement of Knowledge: Medical Humanities Perspectives on Medicine, Science, and Experience
Book Review by Isobel Newby Hansson, Kristofer and Rachel Irwin, editors. Movement of Knowledge: Medical Humanities Perspectives on Medicine, Science, and Experience. Nordic Academic Press, 2020. Movement of Knowledge, edited by Kristofer Hansson and Rachel Irwin, is the result of a collaborative effort by the Cultural Studies Group of Neuroscience at Lund University. Indeed, multidisciplinary […]
How I Lost My Mother: A Story of Life, Care and Dying by Leslie Swartz
Book Review by Ken Junior Lipenga Leslie Swartz. How I Lost My Mother: A Story of Life, Care and Dying. Wits University Press, 2021. 222 pages. There are multiple angles from which one could approach Leslie Swartz’s latest life writing publication, How I Lost My Mother: A Story of Life, Care and Dying. The […]
Angels of Death: When Healthcare Professionals become Murderers
Film Review by Franco Ferrarini, Introduced by Khalid Ali Healthcare professionals, especially doctors and nurses, have public trust to do the best for their patients when these patients are most vulnerable. Saving lives, maintaining patients’ safety and dignity are core principles of the care profession. Unfortunately, widely publicized cases have shown that some doctors can […]
The Rehabilitation of Long Covid Requires Understanding of Not Just the Biomedical Dimensions But All Aspects of Being Human
Blog by Amali U. Lokugamage and Clare Rayner We are both senior doctors affected by multi-system long covid symptoms for almost two years now and have resorted to biomedical, humanities, artistic and complementary methods to support rehabilitation and recovery. We used art and poetry and meditation despite illness. These helped us communicate and make sense […]