conversations about medicine and life
Chris Nichol
My mother-in-law has a radio in her head. She enjoys audio hallucinations. Well, “enjoy” may not be the word. Sometimes, I think, she enjoys them. At other times she endures them. The real problem is she can’t turn them off. For the best part of a year now she’s been concerned that muzak is regularly playing in her apartment. She’s asked us to have a word with the management to get it turned off. Unfortunately we can’t hear it at all. It’s not playing for us.
Dr Simon Brebner
I couldn’t draw well at school, and therefore wasn’t good at ‘Art’. Since then, however, I’ve enjoyed bolting three-dimensional works together. I blessedly still don’t have to draw anything, but can use my imagination and discipline to make pieces that, I hope, eventually feel balanced. [Read more…] about The Lightbox Skeleton
Professor Terence Doyle
Like most works of art, William Hogarth’s The Company of Undertakers has hidden depths. The early eighteenth century was a time of increasing freedom of expression, associated with the rise of a thinking middle class in society, after the Revolution of 1688. Hypocrisy in social and moral values came under particular scrutiny; and satire was a popular vehicle for such criticism.
Sue Wootton
There is a long and noble tradition of doctors who write about medicine. The best of this writing brings to the page powerful insights about what it means to be a human being—the kind of insights that are sparked when the steel of medical science is struck by the flint of medicine’s art. Language is one of the key medical arts, and memoir and essays make wonderful genres for the development of such sparks.
[Read more…] about 4 doctor writers: Oliver Sacks, Paul Kalanithi, Gavin Francis and David Galler
Annette Rose
Everyone knows what a scream sounds like. But do you know what it looks like?
This is what a scream looks like.
This is a mask from the Quake Mask Project, a mask-making project for children affected by the 2010-11 Christchurch earthquakes.
[Read more…] about The colours screamed: terror and creativity
Barbara Brookes
How many of us know people with an implant of some kind? Otago Professor of Neurosurgery, Dirk De Ridder, gave a fascinating address recently on the history of his field, noting that these days implants provide a way forward for a number of problems. Cochlear implants are one example, but there are many other bits of metal and plastic which are used to assist bodies to function, to do away with pain and for cosmetic enhancement. So the cyborg is amongst us—those with metal hips, plastic breasts, and implanted pacemakers sending out electrical pulses.
[Read more…] about Cyborgs on screen – and sitting next to us
