by Robert Kirk, Neil Pemberton and Tom Quick This research forum is titled Being Well Together: human-animal collaboration, companionship and the promotion of health and wellbeing, It grew out a meeting at the University of Manchester in September 2018, supported by the UK’s Wellcome Trust. We invited academics working in disciplines across the humanities and […]
Latest articles
The Politics of Female Pain: Women’s Citizenship, Twilight Sleep and the Early Birth Control Movement
by Lauren MacIvor Thompson Thanks for reading “The Politics of Female Pain: Women’s Citizenship, Twilight Sleep, and the Early Birth Control Movement” in this month’s issue of Medical Humanities! If you are interested in the contemporary issues surrounding women’s health, pregnancy, and labor and delivery, this article will help shed some light on how we […]
Sophistry in American Medicine? Platonic Reflections on Expertise, Influence and the Public’s Health in the Democratic Context
by Evan V Goldstein So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time. However, should I transgress this Oath and violate it, may the opposite be my […]
From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to Absolute Dependence in an Intensive Care Unit. Reflections on a Clinical Account
by Tina Catherine Sideris This paper tells the story of one man’s experience of terrifying hallucinations and nightmares in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). His experience draws attention to the reality that intensive care treatment can cause emotional suffering severe enough to be identified as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At the same time this patient’s […]
United in Film: Psychiatrist Dr Nabil Elkot Recommends Drama Therapy for Patients and Doctors
Dr Nabil Elkot is a senior Egyptian consultant psychiatrist and the head of the addiction unit in El-Rakhawi Hospital in Cairo. He has a special interest in group therapy for managing addiction and dependency. He was involved in in co-writing, supervising and acting in three landmark TV series: ‘Under control’, ‘Free fall’, and ‘Above suspicion,’ […]
Lessons from Frankenstein: Narrative Myth as Ethical Model
by Yvette Koepke In the past year, scientific breakthroughs have shown both how relevant the questions raised by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein remain, and how commonly the novel gets used as a reference point in ethical debate. A YouTube comment on a news clip reporting the first successful cloning of monkeys in a Chinese lab insisted, […]
Feet and Fertility in the Healing Temples: A Symbolic Communication System Between Gods and Men?
by Silvia Marinozzi Our contribution, Feet and Fertility in the healing temples: a symbolic communication system between gods and men?, aims at proposing a new interpretation of a traditional topic in the archaeological and historical medical studies. There are plenty of anatomical ex-votos of uteruses and feet found in temple repositories in Greece and Southern […]
A Drive Through the Heart of Darkness
Review of ‘The Trial of Ratko Mladic’, directed by Henry Singer, and Robert Miller, showing in ‘London Human Rights Watch Film Festival’ 13–22 March 2019, https://ff.hrw.org/london by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York The Trial of Ratko Mladic begins on 22 November 2017 in The Hague, just as the world is anticipating a […]
What Society Do We Live In? Doctor Gavin Francis on Precarity, Vulnerability, and Narrative
In today’s podcast, EIC Brandy Schillace interviews Gavin Frances, Scottish physician and writer of both travel and medical works of nonfiction. His books include True North, about the artic, Adventures in Human Being, a cultural map of the body, and Shapeshifters, looking at changes in our bodies over time (a Sunday Times Book of the […]
Sensing Space and Making Place: The Hospital and Therapeutic Landscapes in Two Cancer Narratives
by Victoria Bates A Senior Lecturer in Modern History, Victoria Bates researches medico-legal history and the arts in medicine/healthcare at the University of Bristol. In this article for MH, she explores the role of “senses” in the construction and experience of “place,” principally by focusing on patients’ experiences of hospital care. By comparing two cancer narratives, […]