Jane Macnaughton has been a leader in the field of health humanities in Britain, from her position over 18 years as Co-Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities at Durham University. During this time, she has continued work as a clinician. She was part of the core group that set up the Association for […]
Latest articles
Blind alleys and dead ends: researching innovation in late 20th century surgery
How do medical innovations evolve? In “Blind alleys and dead ends: researching innovation in late 20th century surgery,” Harriet Palfreman and Roger Kneebone examine the fortunes of a surgical innovation—the PCCL (percutaneous cholecystolithotomy) treatment of gallstones—in the late 20th century. In 1988, eight patients underwent the procedure, which required extracting the gallstones using an endoscope […]
Lissa: A Story About Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution
Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye (writers), Sarula Bao and Caroline Brewer (art), Marc Parenteau (lettering), Lissa: A Story About Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution (2017), University of Toronto Press, 302 pp, £12.99. Reviewed by Dr Glyn Morgan Lissa is the first book in a new series from University of Toronto Press with the punningly pleasant […]
Women, ‘madness’ and exercise
“Exercise is not politically neutral,” writes Jennifer Jane Hardes. That is, “within what has been declared a ‘risk society’ exercise ought to be examined critically as a new potential mode of self-regulation.” In what is both a concise and rich account “of knowledges about exercise and women’s mental health that emerged throughout the late 19th […]
Celebrating Gounod at Tavistock House on his Bicentenary
This blog post is from Prof Desmond (Des) O’Neill, a geriatrician and cultural gerontologist. O’Neill is a Professor in Medical Gerontology and co-chair of the Medical and Health Humanities group at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Wikipedia is a marvellous source of information but its open structure leaves it vulnerable to practical jokes. An entertaining example […]
Eating disorders, interpretation and the case for creative bibliotherapy research
Is reading good for you? Emily Troscianko takes a long look at bibliotherapy and its therapeutic implications for eating disorders. As she points out in ‘Fiction-reading for good or ill: eating disorders, interpretation and the case for creative bibliotherapy research‘, little is known about the efficacy of such interventions, despite the wide use of fiction […]
Book Review: Cicely Saunders: A Life and Legacy
David Clark, Cicely Saunders: A Life and Legacy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 335pp., £25.99 hardcover, ISBN: 9780190637934 Reviewed by Joe Wood, University of Glasgow This biography, almost 20 years in gestation, provides an encyclopaedic account of the life of Cicely Saunders, often described as the founder of the modern hospice movement. The book […]
Opioids and pain in the emergency department: a narrative crisis
The commentary by Jay Baruch and Stacey Springs, ‘Opioids and pain in the emergency department: a narrative crisis’, is available through open access in the current issue of Medical Humanities. A young woman presents to the emergency department in a sickle cell crisis, complaining of unbearable pain. When asked to rate it on a scale of […]
September 44.3
We are pleased to present the September issue, with its breadth of interest and multiple foci—and also a commentary on our June issue (Pain and its Paradoxes) as yet another way of continuing the conversation. Over the coming month, summaries of these articles will appear here on the blog, along with soundbites from authors explaining […]
Encouraging Patient Narrative as a Humanitarian Act of Kindness
This blog post comes from Catherine Kelsey, a nursing lecturer at the University of Bradford. The ability to tell our stories is as crucial to human life as the air we breathe, the food we eat and the functioning of our senses (Robertson and Clegg, 2017). The communicating of stories can help us to create […]