Post: CONTENT EDITOR, BMJ MH Blog Position type: Remote Stipend: £500 yearly Hours per week: 4-5 Closing Date 12 noon, Monday 2 Dec 2019 Job Summary & Purpose The Medical Humanities blog supports and extends the reach of the BMJ Medical Humanities journal and life sciences regulatory compliance solution. Posts to the blog include […]
Latest articles
Making Space
Podcast Interview with Ciara Breathnach and Brandy Shillace Ciara Breathnach (@CiaraBreath) is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She is a current Irish research Council Laureate holder and her research focuses on Irish social history of medicine and health. In this conversation with Brandy Schillace, she also talks about the […]
A Beautiful Act of Separation
Film Review by Khalid Ali, film and media correspondent ‘The Disappearance of My Mother’, Beniamino Barrese, Italy 2019, showing at the London Film Festival 2019. Benedetta Barzini is a 76-year old retired lecturer who taught fashion studies at the University of Urbino in Italy. She has strong opinions about the exploitation of women in the fashion industry: ‘’Photographers […]
Hippocrates Now: Quoting the Father of Medicine
Blog by Helen King Helen King is Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University, UK My latest book is about the Hippocratic corpus, but although I’m a classicist by training I only address the usual issues of authorship, theories and practices to set the scene. Instead, my focus is on what I’ve called […]
Conquering Death
Film Review by Khalid Ali, film and media correspondent ‘Hope frozen’, directed by Pailin Wedel, Thailand, USA, 2019 Showing at the BFI London Film Festival, 6th and 7th of October Breakthroughs in medicine and advances in technology such as ‘Thrombolysis’ (clot busting treatment for strokes caused by blood clots in the brain) and ‘Thrombectomy’ (mechanical […]
Protect, or Deprive of Liberty?
Review by Khalid Ali, Film and Media correspondent ‘The peanut butter falcon’, directed by Michael Schwartz and Tyler Nilson, USA 2019, Showing at the Love Gala at the BFI London Film Festival, 3, 4th and 11th October 2019. No one can question the fact that healthcare professionals have a duty of care and protection towards […]
‘He’s My Mate You See’: A Longitudinal Critical Discourse Analysis of the Therapeutic Role of Companion Animals for People Living with Severe Mental Illnesses
Article Summary by Helen Brooks There is increasing evidence of the supportive role pets play for people with mental health conditions. Pets have been shown to distract people from upsetting symptoms and experiences, offer an important source of comfort and routine, and promote social interaction. This paper aimed to extend our understanding of this therapeutic […]
Pain Medicine Special Interdisciplinary Issue
Call for Papers Pain Medicine is planning an interdisciplinary Special Issue on meaning in the context of pain. Guest editors are Dr Simon van Rysewyk, Dr John Quintner and Prof Milton Cohen. Special Issue Themes and Sub-Themes Including, but not restricted to, the following: Common experiential meanings of pain in different contexts Chronic non-cancer pain […]
What’s in it for the Animals? Symbiotically Considering ‘Therapeutic’ Human-Animal Relations within Spaces and Practices of Care Farming
Article Summary by Richard Gorman Care farming is an emerging form of healthcare that aims to deploy farming practices as a type of therapeutic intervention, with human-animal relations framed as providing important opportunities for human health. The growing body of academic work on care farming links participation in a care farming scheme as having the […]
Essential(ist) Medicine Promoting Social Explanations for Racial Variation in Biomedical Research
Article Summary by Iliya Gutin When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail—and when all you have is a definition of race rooted in biology and genetics, every racial disparity in health outcomes is attributed to these intrinsic differences. Fortunately, this narrative applies far less to contemporary biomedicine than the […]