Tag Archives: Elaine Scarry

On beauty and medical ethics

September 13, 2021

John Brewer Eberly Jr. Anderson, South Carolina, United States Lydia S. Dugdale New York, United States   Darian Goldin Stahl, “The Scan and the Mirror,” Stone lithography and silkscreen, 22″ x 28,” 2013. Private collection. www.dariangoldinstahl.com. Philosophers know that beauty is moving, arresting, enrapturing. It captures the attention and then calls the viewer to action—pursuing, […]

The use of language in health and illness narratives

February 2, 2021

Mariella Scerri Victor Grech  Malta   Portrait of Virginia Woolf in 1902. By George Charles Beresford. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia. “While I was as busy as anyone on the sunny plain of life, I heard of you laid aside in the shadowy recess where our sunshine of hope and joy could never penetrate to you.” […]

Ahab’s gift: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the meaning of pain

June 23, 2020

Xi Chen Rochester, New York, United States   A whale being speared with harpoons by fishermen in the arctic sea. Engraving by A. M. Fournier after E. Traviès. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. In the summer months before my first year of medical school, I unfurled the pages of Moby Dick. Immersed in the novel’s adventurous […]