Volume 1, Issue 5 – Fall 2009
Fall 2009 ISSN 2155-3017
Art and Medicine
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Medical history
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Medical School Journey
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Essays
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Medicine and LiteratureHumanities at the heart of health careVictoria Bonebakker The Maine Humanities Council Imagine doctors, nurses, receptionists, trustees, administrators, lab techs and physician assistants, books in hand, sitting in a hospital conference room, cafeteria or lounge. With a humanities scholar serving as a facilitator, they are discussing the novel, short story or poem they have read, and reflecting together on what it means to them – as people and as professionals engaged in the enterprise of health care. Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care ® engages diverse groups of health care professionals with literary texts that invite them to step into worlds outside of their own experience, with vibrant and often profound accounts of illness, death and human relationships in different places and times. More… |
Mind/body practiceThe brain is wider than the sky: integrating insights of neuroscience with hatha yoga
Chicago, Illinois The age of neuroscience has arrived. Go to a bookstore, turn on a TV, open a magazine, and you’ll find evidence of America’s new fascination: the human brain. How we think, remember, perceive, feel, and imagine are no longer the subjects of philosophers and poets alone, but are under the eyes of an ever-growing number of scientists in a wide array of fields related to the study of the biology and evolution of the central nervous system. Advances in imaging technology, neurobiology, cognitive psychology and a host of converging fields have brought us even to the brink of unlocking the very biological basis of consciousness itself. More… |
Medical EthicsAnother look at Hippocrates
University of New Mexico, Alburquerque From my early years in medical school, I recall the reverence with which my teachers talked about Hippocrates. The great Indian physicians, Charaka and Shushruta, who worked and wrote several hundred years before Hippocrates, were mentioned only in passing. The Hippocratic Ethics, the Hippocratic Oath, and the clinical observations made by Hippocrates were central to the teaching of ancient medical history. I vividly recall learning about the various assessments attributed to Hippocrates, including the Hippocratic facies (the gaunt and blank look of a patient that predicted impending death) and the succussion splash, a sign of hydro-pneumothorax. We did not take a formal Hippocratic Oath, but the Oath was written on a marble slab and prominently displayed in the hallowed halls of the medical school Administrative Building. More… |