Unexpected Gifts: Film review of “Looted,” by Rene van Pannevis

Looted, directed by Rene van Pannevis, UK, 2019, available on virtual cinema and on-demand. by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell, New York. Alert: the review contains plot spoilers!   The central story of Looted is a bitter father-son saga, a tragedy about parental failure and filial remorse.  The film also includes explicit depictions of terminal […]

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Review of “I Know This Much Is True” TV series (Derek Cianfrance, USA, 2020)

“Man Can Do What He Wills But He Cannot Will What He Wills” On the Freedom of the Will, Arthur Schopenauer, 1839. By Dr. Franco Ferrarini, gastroenterologist and film reviewer. This short HBO series centres on the life of two twin brothers, Thomas, and Dominick Birdsey (both played by Mark Ruffalo), the former affected by […]

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Book Review: Claire Hilton on “Staring Night” by Robert Abrams.

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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