Tag: Medical Humanities
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Illness or intoxication? Diagnosing a French clown
Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, USA In his day, Thomas Couture was a renowned history painter, though his students would later surpass him in fame—the likes of Edouard Manet and John Lafarge. Born in the small French town of Senlis, his parents moved to Paris when he was a child so he could study art. He attended…
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Not by blood
Simon EdberPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States Raven knows exactly how she joined the family: “She didn’t want me so she took me to the hospital, and then you came and bought me from the hospital.” Well, almost exactly. “I didn’t buy you,” Cathy corrects her from across the room, smiling but not daring to laugh. Even…
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Fighting the long defeat
John EberlyColumbia, South Carolina, United States “Together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.”1 — J. R. R. Tolkien In May 1965, a fire started on the ground floor of the Sound Lumber Company in Arcata, California. Sparks spread quickly through the sawmill, engulfing the “cold deck,” a four million board-foot pile…
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An emperor unclothed: The virtuous Osler
Patrick FiddesPaul A. KomesaroffMelbourne, Australia Apart from Hippocrates himself, William Osler was among the most praised physicians of all time. Like his Greek forerunner, Osler amassed a huge following of loyal supporters, for whom he could evidently do no wrong. One went so far as to suggest that Osler was: “the greatest physician of all…
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Shackleton’s angel
Paul G. FirthBoston, Massachusetts, United States South Georgia Island is a tortured upheaval of mountain and glacier that falls in chaos to the jagged coastline of the South Atlantic Ocean.1 From thirty miles of this wind-blasted sub-Antarctic wilderness came walking on the afternoon of the 20 May 1916 “a terrible-looking trio of scarecrows,” soaked to…
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Walt Whitman: A difficult patient
Jack CoulehanStony Brook, New York, United States On June 15, 1888, the following notice appeared in the New York Times under the headline AGED POET SUFFERS RELAPSE: Prof. William Osler, of the University of Pennsylvania, was summoned by telegraph this afternoon to go to Walt Whitman’s bedside. The aged poet had a relapse, and it…
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Classicism and Sir Charles Bell’s Engravings of the Nerves
Allister NeherMontreal, Quebec, Canada Readers of medical humanities journals have become accustomed to seeing articles on anatomical illustration and its indebtedness to the techniques and conventions of the fine arts. As diverse as connections between these two areas can be, they are often more complicated than we might expect, especially when we examine the circumstances…
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Sir Roderick Glossop: Wodehouse’s “eminent loony doctor”
Paul DakinNorth London, UK P.G. Wodehouse is one of the greatest comic authors of the twentieth century. He wrote nearly a hundred books containing a fascinating array of characters. Many inhabited the confined geography of 1920’s London and country houses, with occasional trips to New York or the French Riviera. This was the world Wodehouse…
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Latin and medicine
Noah DeLoneMiami, Florida, United States Language is the cornerstone of our ability to communicate as humans and underlies the prose of our medical discourse. The words we select can be indicative of our background, training, and intentions. It should come as no surprise that a robust knowledge of one’s own language is essential to good…
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Synesthesia in medicine and the humanities
Eleni I. (Lena) ArampatzidouGreece Dr. Arampatzidou would like to dedicate this essay to Professor Alexander Nehamas, Director Dimitri Gondicas and the Stanley Seeger Center at Princeton University for their support and generosity in offering her a research fellowship in medical humanities which made this publication possible. Synesthesia (syn=plus + aesthesis=sensation in Greek) is a term used…