Building bridges: two films about self-discovery after stroke Dr Khalid Ali Two recent films portray the aftermaths of stroke from different viewpoints: that of a stroke survivor in My Beautiful Broken Brain (UK 2016, directed Lotje Sodderland and Sophie Anderson, currently showing on Netflix) and that of the daughter of a stroke survivor in You See Me […]
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The Reading Room: ‘Making Medical Knowledge’
Making Medical Knowledge By Miriam Solomon Oxford University Press, 2015 Reviewed by Dr Jonathan Fuller, University of Toronto We should forgive anyone unfamiliar with recent trends in ‘scientific medicine’ for thinking that within scientific medicine there are now multiple medicines to choose from: evidence-based medicine (EBM), translational medicine, narrative medicine, personalized medicine, […]
PCMD Medical Humanities Conference 2016
Ian Fussell Community Sub Dean UEMS In 2002, The Peninsula Medical School (now Peninsular College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD)) became the first UK medical school to integrate the medical humanities as core curriculum. Every year since, year four students engage in a six-month project alongside and mentored by an artist. The culmination […]
The Reading Room: This Living and Immortal Thing
And so it goes…this thing called life Fergus Shanahan This Living and Immortal Thing By Austin Duffy Granta Books, 2016 If authors write what they know, then Austin Duffy knows a lot, but This Living and Immortal Thing, his first novel, blends experience with fiction and offers more than informed opinion […]
The Reading Room: ‘Deaf Gain’
Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity H-Dirksen L. Bauman and Joseph J. Murray, Editors University of Minnesota Press, 2014 Reviewed by Dr Paul Dakin, GP Trainer in North London with research interest in the representation of d/Deaf people This book challenges the commonly held notion that deafness is an existence […]
Khalid Ali: ‘Let’s talk about death: a review of ‘Last cab to Darwin’, Australia 2015’
Let’s talk about death: a review of ‘Last cab to Darwin’, Australia 2015 5*, Directed by Jeremy Sims based on stage play by Reg Cribb Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) December 2015, possible release in UK cinemas 2016/17 The controversial subject of ‘euthanasia and assisted suicide’ has been a rich source for films; ‘Whose life […]
Ayesha Ahmad: ‘Lahore is an Illusion, Lahore is Everywhere’
The mango tree faded many shadows ago, its fruit became stones and the branches became a skeleton. Yet, the roots remained, and they embrace the soil in the womb of the earth. This was the cradle of my family’s birth. Now, blood is watering Lahore’s gardens. In sorrow, I remembered these words given to me a […]
Franco Ferrarini: The Past: a Friend or Foe? Different Perspectives from ‘Spectre’ and ‘45 years’.
The Past: a Friend or Foe? Different Perspectives from ‘Spectre’ and ‘45 years’. Spectre- directed by Sam Mendes, UK, 2015 45 years- directed by Andrew Haigh, UK, 2015 By Franco Ferrarini, Gastroenterologist and film reviewer In the words of the French philosopher Henri Bergson: ‘The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring […]
The Reading Room: Short-list for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine
Fragility of the human form: short-list for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine The Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine – winner of the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Innovation and Excellence in the Arts – is an interdisciplinary venture that investigates the synergy between medicine, the arts and health. Poets from New York […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Introduction to Global Humanities—Through Creation, Violence Will Die
Against the backdrop of violence, I have been examining through my research the qualities of our human condition that perpetuate both our survival and our spirit. As an introduction to an ongoing series on Global Humanities, I will be discussing ways we can counter the dominant narrative of violence. Our globalised world, or rather, the collective […]