Corpus - Corpus

Six months in a grey gown: an epidemic of rheumatic fever

30 October 2017 4 Comments

Beatrice Hale

child with rheumatic fever — Erythema marginatum on the back of a child with acute rheumatic fever.

When I was nine-going-on-ten – nearly 70 years ago! – I was hospitalised for six months with rheumatic fever. There was an epidemic in Aberdeen, Scotland, at the time. And there were two long wards of children. Those of us with rheumatic fever had grey gowns, and those of us with something else had red gowns. I never discovered quite what all those something elses might be.

Two boys, one in red and one in grey, stand out in my memory. Tommy Nobbs had a red gown. He had the bed opposite mine, across the central passageway, so I always had a fairly good idea of what he was up to. He was probably seven or eight, and mischievous. He did not like being in hospital, nor did he like staying in bed most of the time. He was allowed to move around a bit, and was directed to the children’s room, with its toys and books, and sometimes to the ward kitchen. But these weren’t enough for our Tommy. He used to lie angelically in bed, waiting until the nurses were occupied in other areas. Then he’d squirm out of his bed and slide under other beds, poking the unhappy occupant. We couldn’t yell at him, because that would have brought the staff running, and result in DISCOVERY.

Elegant feet and gentle noses: anatomical drawing and personhood

30 October 2017 2 Comments

Monica Carroll and Adam Dickerson

A description of a collaboration between a writer (Monica Carroll) and a philosopher (Adam Dickerson).

Through Husserl’s phenomenology we explored the idea of forms of writing that could be coherent with lived experience and with an experience of the body. We found that specialised forms of description, such as anatomical description, shaped and portrayed some parts of lived experience while leaving others parts unspoken. Our explorations in this field produced an artists’ book of loose-leaf folios that point towards unspoken areas of the body, both animated and lifeless.

Work

23 October 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

In New Zealand, every fourth Monday in October is Labour Day, a public holiday that commemorates the introduction of the eight-hour working day. This achievement dates back to the 1840 campaign of Wellington carpenter Samuel Pickering. The public holiday dates from 1890, and was ‘Mondayised’ in 1910.

Work is extremely important to health and wellbeing (read a Corpus take on this by Matt Blackwood here). It can enrich a life, or grind a person into dust. As ever, balance is all, and Corpus is taking a mini-break for Labour Day (just one post this week), because…

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Philip Larkin, from Toads [Read more…] about Work

“my wide white bed”: poems by Trish Harris

16 October 2017 Leave a Comment

Lynn Jenner

The hospital sails
like a tall ship
down the crease of the valley.
I am stabilised
mid-mast
laid out on a wide white bed
head facing east.

The first poem in my wide white bed, Trish Harris’s poetic memoir of an eight week stay in Lower Hutt Hospital, places her in bed, pinned out and pinned down. She is in pain, she has lots to worry about but she has a window to look out from and lots of company – sometimes more company than she would like. She can’t go anywhere or get out of bed. She can’t avoid the noises of peoples’ bodies and she can’t escape from her own body.

Silverstream Hospital and the Marines

16 October 2017 6 Comments

Susanna (Susi) Williams

When we talk about World War 2, we usually tell the stories of people, but I would like to highlight the role of Silverstream Hospital in saving soldiers’ lives and connecting New Zealanders with Americans at a time when New Zealanders felt very vulnerable to the threat of invasion by the Japanese. Japanese military successes in early 1942, especially the fall of Singapore, had made the possibility of an invasion of New Zealand very real. In this context the presence of two Marine divisions was welcomed by the New Zealand government. With the Marines here, New Zealand would be safer, our own soldiers could stay in North Africa, and New Zealand could be a base for American operations against Japanese-occupied Islands in the South Pacific.

Marines receiving Purple Heart, Silverstream Hospital 1943 — Colonel J H Nankivell, United States Military Attache in Wellington, handing citation orders to United States Marines receiving the Purple Heart decoration for gallantry at the United States Naval Base Hospital in Silverstream, Upper Hutt, 31 January, 1943. Image courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library.

Rhododendron Day

16 October 2017 4 Comments

Sue Wootton and Doug Lilly

2017_10_15 Botanical Gardens 01

Tick tock, tick tock. Ours is a busy culture built on clock time. With so much to do and only 24 hours a day in which to do it, no wonder sleeplessness, anxiety and overwhelm are some of the signature complaints of, well, our times. But there are other ways of living in time. There is seasonal time, for example.

Thus I could tell you it’s October in Dunedin, or I can throw a blanket over that clockwork time-bird ticking in its cage and go outside. What’s the time? Here it is: it’s seven-tui-in-the-kōwhai. It’s the time of the full-blown orange poppies, the time of pear-blossom-like-snow, the moment of wisteria-begins-to-purple. It’s the era of the slightly tattered tulips and the wind-blown dilapidated daffodils.

And most vividly of all, it is the time of the rhododendrons, a city-wide seasonal blaze of beauty, celebrated annually at the Dunedin Botanic Gardens (home of the world-renowned Rhododendron Dell) as Rhododendron Day. Season’s tidings, then, from the colour-full, spring-full south.

[Read more…] about Rhododendron Day