Article Summary by Alan Cribb No doubt everyone would agree that conversations are valuable. Amongst other things they are one of the ways we can attend to, appreciate and learn from one another. This, of course, is relevant to practical activities like healthcare improvement. Healthcare improvement typically involves technical or formally specified processes working alongside […]
Latest articles
The Body Politic: A Review of Cells at Work!, vols. 1-6
Book Review by A. David Lewis Shimizu, A. (2015). Cells at Work!, Volume 1. New York: Kodansha. 978-1-63236-356-5 Shimizu, A. (2016). Cells at Work!, Volume 2. New York: Kodansha. 978-1-63236-357-2 Shimizu, A. (2017). Cells at Work!, Volume 3. New York: Kodansha. 978-1-63236-390-9 Shimizu, A. (2017). Cells at Work!, Volume 4. New York: Kodansha. 978-1-63236-391-6 Shimizu, A. (2017). Cells at Work!, Volume 5. New York: Kodansha. […]
The Dying Patient: Taboo, Controversy and Missing Terms of Reference for Designers—An Architectural Perspective
Article Summary by Annie Bellamy Our societies have become more and more removed from the realities of growing old and dying. The language surrounding death, dying and who the ‘patient’ really is has become clouded and confusing, which has only been made worse by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Language and key terms of […]
Straight Talk: Call It By Its Name
Film Review by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York Review of ‘Tacheles—The Heart of the Matter’, directed by Jana Matthes and Andrea Schramm (Germany, 2020), screened at the London Human Rights Watch Film Festival. In ‘Tacheles—The Heart of the Matter’, Yaar Harell, the real-life twenty-something grandson of Holocaust survivors, is troubled by […]
Health, Well-being, and Material-Ideal Hybrid Spaces in Yeats’s Writing
Article Summary by Tudor Balinisteanu The medical humanities research carried out in our Neuroaesthetics Lab at University of Suceava asks whether art that engenders awareness of one’s embodied life is healthier than art that fosters statuary ideals. We argue that sacrificing mindfulness of one’s own embodied life in favour of spiritual or idealistic purpose can […]
Pine Fresh: The Cultural and Medical Context of Pine Scent in Relation to Health—From the Forest to the Home
Article Summary by Clare Hickman This article uses a sensory approach to trace the attachment of concepts of health in relation to the scent of pine trees, and how that has been perceived as signaling particular health properties in different spaces—namely the forest, the tuberculosis sanatoria and the home—over the last two centuries. By tracing […]
From Blocked Flows to Suppressed Emotions: The Life of a Trope
Article Summary by Stewart Justman This article looks into the traditional notion that disease results from excesses pent up in the body and that treatment consists of getting rid of them. Interested readers will discover variants of this topos in surprising places—for example, in the 18th-century belief that smallpox resident in the body could be […]
LivingBodiesObjects with Stuart Murray
Podcast with Brandy Schillace and Stuart Murray LivingBodiesObjects is a 3-year project funded by the Wellcome Trust designed to test and extend the boundaries of Medical Humanities research. Wellcome’s three-year development grant will be used to further understand the relationship between the human body and technologies associated with health and disability. At the same time, the […]
Ethnographic Fieldwork Among Pigs and People: What Can We Learn from Previous Xenotransplantations?
Blog by Susanne Lundin In the late 1990s, I visited a farm at a secret location in the UK where I met the offspring of the world-famous Astrid. Astrid herself was staying in another place, hidden from the public eye (as is customary for celebrities). Astrid was not just any mother of several children, but […]
Food hygiene, Public Health Education and Citizenship in Britain, 1948–1967
Article Summary by Alex Mold Anyone who has ever suffered from a bout of food poisoning can attest to the importance of good food hygiene. Encouraging people to follow simple rules, such as washing hands before preparing or eating food, has long been a task for public health educators. In this article I examine public […]