Medical Humanities - Corpus

Bibliotherapy: a cure for bigotry?

4 December 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

Bibliotherapy is the treatment of ills and ailments by reading. The term was coined in a satiric article called “A Literary Clinic” published in 1916 in The Atlantic Monthly. Written by the American essayist and Unitarian minister Samuel McChord Crothers, it described an imaginary ‘bibliopathic institute’ run by one Dr Bagster, a gentleman to whom “nothing human was foreign”. Among other conditions, Dr Bagster is committed to treating bigotry in all its forms.

The sign on the door of Dr Bagster’s clinic reads:

Bibliopathic Institute. Book Treatment by Competent Specialists. Dr. Bagster meets patients by appointment. Free Clinic 2-4 P.M. Outpatients looked after in their homes by members of the Social Service Department. Young People’s Lend-a-Thought Club every Sunday evening at 7.30. Tired Business Men in classes. Tired Business Men’s tired wives given individual treatment. Tired mothers who are reading for health may leave their children in the Day Nursery.”

“Medicine and the novel”: a short story

27 November 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

Medicine went to the doctor. “What brings you here today?” asked the doctor.

“I’m limping,” said Medicine. “My right side is strong, but my left side is weak. I’m tired but I can’t sleep. I never feel refreshed. I’m exhausted. I have everything I need but I’m not content. I don’t know what I want. I can’t see the wood for the trees.”

“When was the last time you sat under a tree?” asked the doctor.

“The Poetry Pharmacy”

20 November 2017 2 Comments

Emma Storr

Can poetry be therapeutic? William Sieghart, editor of the recently published The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried and True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul, certainly believes in the power of a carefully selected poem to comfort and to make sense of feelings that threaten to overwhelm us at times of great stress. He argues that a poem can help us understand our emotional state and alleviate our fear that we are the only person who is suffering in this particular way. The inspiration for the book arose from a friend’s suggestion that after his talk at a poetry festival, Sieghart should offer short consultations to audience members and prescribe a suitable poem for their individual state of mind. It proved a great success and Sieghart subsequently toured the UK offering poetry pharmacies in libraries and festivals. As he states in the introduction to the book:

In all of this, I learned how much most people’s heartaches have in common.”

Writing Minnie Dean

20 November 2017 Leave a Comment

Karen Zelas

Minnie Dean is the only woman to have been hung in New Zealand (Invercargill, 1895). Her story wasted no time entering our country’s mythology and to this day she remains a cautionary figure used by some parents to foster compliant behaviour in their children. Earlier this year, Mākaro Press published my verse biography: The Trials of Minnie Dean.

I first became acquainted with her circumstances a hundred years after her death, when asked to review Lynley Hood’s 1994 biography Minnie Dean: her life & crimes for the International Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect. At that time, I was a Child and Family Psychiatrist, accepted as a specialist in this area. From Hood’s research I was satisfied that, at least in part, Minnie Dean became a scapegoat of Victorian morality. She cared for unwanted young children, raising some to adulthood. It was inevitable that there would be deaths, since the infant mortality rate at the time was extremely high (up to 90% in institutional care). I drew a parallel with contemporary fostercare and the undervaluing of the role of fosterparents.

[Read more…] about Writing Minnie Dean

“Life in day-tight compartments”: Osler on doctor wellbeing

13 November 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

Doctor wellbeing has been in the news lately, with the recent ratification by the World Medical Association of a new clause to the Declaration of Geneva (the modern Hippocratic Oath). The change was proposed and promoted by Queentown’s Dr Sam Hazledine, following concern at the very high level of burnout experienced by doctors. The old clause read, “The health of my patient will be my first consideration.” The new clause reads:

I will attend to my own health, wellbeing and abilities in order to provide care of the highest standard.”

Heart risk 1; Sore puku 0

6 November 2017 5 Comments

Kyle Eggleton

I’m a doctor who has been writing poetry for about a year. My poetry writing was born out of a need to more deeply understand the world. Sometimes this need to understand the world arises from a frustration, like a dry seed head lodged in a tramping sock that rubs and chaffs and spoils an otherwise leisurely walk. Sometimes my need to understand stems from my lack of inner comprehension. By exploring the dusty and cobweb filled recesses of my inner self I often uncover a truth about myself and where I fit in the world.

The colours, smells, sounds and emotions invoked by poetry creates what my poet mother calls ‘word pictures’. My work as a general practitioner is full of these word pictures – like the silvery trails left on a father’s face as he talks of the suicide of his child; the cloying, pungent aroma of poverty; the dry hacking paroxysms wracking the frail body of a man without hope.