Tag: psychiatry
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Ahab’s gift: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the meaning of pain
Xi ChenRochester, New York, United States In the summer months before my first year of medical school, I unfurled the pages of Moby Dick. Immersed in the novel’s adventurous spirit and Shakespearean prose, I followed the narrator from the piers of Nantucket into the Atlantic and waded through Captain Ahab’s quest for the legendary white…
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Tracing wisps of hair
Miriam RosenPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States My mother was diagnosed with cancer when I was fourteen. For the next nine years, she lived her life with elegance and seemed to do it with ease. She continued her psychiatry practice, only gradually reducing the number of patients she saw. She read the New York Times cover to…
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Dr. Fanny Halpern, a psychiatric go-between of 1930s Shanghai
Richard ZhangPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States On September 20, 1935, a lengthy advertisement in one of Shanghai’s most popular newspapers, the Shen Bao, celebrated the recent opening of the Shanghai Puci Sanatorium (上海普濨療養院).1 The sanatorium would later be known in Western histories as The Mercy Hospital for Nervous Diseases. The advertisement lauded the Puci Sanatorium, headed…
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The big sheepdog
Gregory RoseLexington, Kentucky, United States “How ya doin’, Wayne?” It had been some ten years, back in high school, since I had seen Wayne. I had returned to general practice in my small home town and I was not sure what Wayne had been doing during that time, but when I saw him again, it…
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Nikolai Gogol’s The Diary of a Madman
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809–1852) was a member of the first wave of great Russian authors of the nineteenth century. Born in a Ukrainian Cossack village then part of the Russian Empire, he made his way to Saint Petersburg where he found his métier in the short story; a genre…
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Christian cutting at Vancouver General
Amber MooreVancouver, British Columbia, Canada She calls it “Christian cutting,” and laughs dryly,as if trying to soak the secret back up. It’s futile;in the Psychiatry Assessment Unit at Vancouver General,everything spills out eventually anyway- it gushes. Carving crucifixes in her skin, she prays to Mary becauseJesus just won’t do.She doesn’t think he’ll bother to try…
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Chekhov: “Ward No. 6”
Stanley GutiontovChicago, Illinois, United States “Andrei Yefimich understood everything. Without saying a word, he walked to the bed Nikita had given him and sat down; seeing that Nikita was waiting, he stripped naked and became embarrassed. He then put on his hospital clothes; the pants were too short, the shirt was too long, and the…
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Heartache and complicated grief
Laurie Elise GordonNew York, New York, United States “To whom shall I tell this heartache?” – Old Russian song Medicine is haunted by grief. In tense silences we may sense the specter. Grieving is a normal developmental process, but in some it gets interrupted. A grieving patient calls upon the physician’s most highly attuned empathy.…