Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is a good-looking fifty-year-old successful professor of linguistics; her loving husband (Alec Baldwin) is a brilliant research physician, she has three beautiful children, a brownstone in the Upper West side and a house at the Hamptons. This is the perfect stage for an impending disaster; in fact after some episodes of […]
Latest articles
Maslaha Workshop for Medical Students: Practical implications of working with diverse communities
Narrative is an increasingly potent concept for medical educators; developed as a tool to un-cover the patient experience as well as to illustrate the nuances where empathy has a place to fill the gap between the patient and their doctor. Medical humanities, then, has an integral role for students learning how to become a doctor; […]
Book Review: The Development of Narrative Practices in Medicine c.1960-2000
The Development of Narrative Practices in Medicine c.1960-2000 Jones E M, Tansey E M. (eds) (2015) Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine, vol. 52. London: Queen Mary University of London. Reviewed by Ben Chisnall, Medical Student, King’s College London, UK “Narrative medicine” is a term used to refer to a number of analytical and interpretative […]
Medicine Unboxed: Students 2015 – An Invitation to Participate
Medicine Unboxed: Students 2015 – Call for Participation Medicine Unboxed aims to inspire debate and cultural change in healthcare. Medicine today exists at a time of extraordinary scientific knowledge and therapeutic possibility but faces challenging moral, political and social questions. Medicine Unboxed engages the general public and healthcare audiences with a view of medicine […]
ePatients: The Medical, Ethical and Legal Repercussions of Blogging and Micro-Blogging Experiences of Illness and Disease – Call for Papers and Conference Details
Queen’s University Belfast, 11-12 September 2015 Call for Papers Referring to the growth of online patient-initiated resources, including medical blogs, the BMJ noted in a 2004 editorial that we were witnessing ‘the most important technocultural medical revolution of the past century’. Ten years later, the controversy caused by Bill Keller’s opinion piece in the New […]
Art in Arthritis by Nancy Merridew
I called Marco from the waiting room. Everyone looked waxen under the fluorescent lights of Rheumatology Clinic. His olive skin looked grey. He rose like a grapevine on the trellis – thickset but gnarled through the seasons. Marco helped his wife with her handbag and they walked together. Her gait was […]
The Reading Room: The Wellcome Book Prize
The shortlist for the Wellcome Book Prize was announced today (http://wellcomebookprize.org/) Awarded annually, and open to works of fiction and nonfiction, the prize focuses on books that have some aspect of medicine, illness or health as their central theme. This year’s shortlist includes the following six titles: The Iceberg by Marion Coutts Do No […]
The Reading Room: A review of Henry Marsh’s ‘Do No Harm’
Reviewed by Eoin Dinneen, Academic Clinical Fellow, University College London Hospital Do No Harm is a remarkably simple book. So much so, The Guardian (the book was short listed for The Guardian ‘First Book Award’) asks, ‘Why has no one ever written a book like this before?’ Each chapter’s starting point is a […]
The Reading Room: A review of ‘Performance, Madness and Psychiatry’
Performance, Madness and Psychiatry Isolated Acts Edited by Anna Harpin & Juliet Foster Reviewed by Femi Oyebode National Centre for Mental Health 25 Vincent Drive Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2FG Femi_oyebode@msn.com In the spring of 1836, John Clare (1793-1864) visited Peterborough and accompanied Mrs. Marsh, the bishop’s wife, to the theatre to see Merchant […]
The Man in Bed Five by Jack Garnham
I go to see the man in bed five. He winks at me. Cracked lips separate to reveal an imperfect set of yellow teeth as a wry smile spreads slowly across his face. It comes with an enormous effort. He looks worse; the burden of disease seems to weigh heavier with each passing hour. […]