Staring Night: Queen Victoria’s Late-life Depression by Robert C Abrams (New York: International Psychoanalytic Books, 2020. ISBN 978-1-949093-55-1) by Claire Hilton MD PhD FRCPsych, Historian in Residence, Royal College of Psychiatrists, 21 Prescot St, London E1 8BB, UK historian@rcpsych.ac.uk In the last few months of her life, Queen Victoria was solemn, sad, and fearful, yet […]
Latest articles
Reflecting on Loss and Grief
Review of ‘Loco’ (Rory Wilson, UK, 2020), ‘Skeletons’ (Will Peppercorn, UK, 2020), and ‘Early Grief Special’ (Jessica Chowdhury, UK, 2020), showing at the BFI Future Film Festival—Free Program Available online 18–21 February 2021, https://www.bfi.org.uk/future-film-festival Film Review by Khalid Ali, Film and Media Correspondent History taking from patients, and presenting stories of people’s illness in a […]
Call for Papers: Access and Social Justice
The Covid-19 pandemic has stripped away comfortable illusions, has exposed how fragile our medical, governmental, and social health care systems, and has shed additional light on deeply problematic inequalities in the distribution and allocation of care. We mustn’t return to normal; normal was not good enough. For this reason, we are continuing this year in […]
Book Review: “Body Talk in the Medical Humanities: Whose Language”
by Teodora Manea Jennifer Patterson and Francia Kinchington (eds): Body Talk in the Medical Humanities: Whose Language, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, pp. 311 This book explores different discourses around the body, focusing on the idea of body-talk and body language. The complexity of this topic is generated by the fact that we […]
Black History Month Feature: Dr. Oni Blackstock
Throughout the month of February, in honor Black History Month, the Medical Humanities-BMJ blog is proud to feature distinguished Black individuals who have made outstanding contributions to medicine and medical humanities. By Brandy Schillace, Medical Humanities-BMJ EIC Here at Medical Humanities, we have been very lucky to have hosted Dr. Oni Blackstock, MD, MHS, on […]
What Becomes of Us: Health Disparity in Pandemic
On today’s podcast, Editor Brandy Schillace speaks to Josh Mugele. a disaster and emergency medicine physician who is working to build an emergency residency in Northeast Georgia. Listen now [transcript below] Medicine is actually his second career, after he worked Silicon Valley during the dot com boom. He attained his doctorate from the University of […]
From contradictory to complementary: Acknowledging the complex everyday choices of men’s sexualities
by Dr. Jaime García-Iglesias and Joe Strong In response to the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK, Soho-based sexual health clinic 56 Dean Street launched the campaign ‘Break the Chain’ (also known as ‘Test Now, Stop HIV’): based on the belief that people would not meet for sex during the lockdown, the campaign pushed for postal […]
Film Review: “The Mole Agent”: Growing old behind closed doors
‘The Mole Agent’ (Maite Alberdi, Chile, 2020), in UK cinemas and on-demand form Friday 11th December 2020, distributed by Dogwoof Khalid Ali’s selection for the best documentary film in 2020 Documentary film is a genre that a regular film viewer might find difficult to enjoy on a Saturday film-night out. Maite Alberdi challenges those prejudices […]
Book Review: Helen King, “Hippocrates now: the ‘father of medicine’ in the internet age”
by Owen Rees Helen King. Hippocrates now: the “father of medicine” in the internet age. Bloomsbury studies in classical reception. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 262 p. ISBN 9781350005891 Medicine and the internet have always had an uneasy relationship, with ‘Dr Google’ regularly prophesising doom to any unsuspecting enquirer typing in their symptoms. For […]
Belonging
by Eunice Stallman, MD I had just received a call that I had been accepted to medical school. The first thing I did was to call my significant other to share the exciting news. The second thing I did was pull up google to search, “best time to have children in medical training?” I was certain […]