conversations about medicine and life
Sarah Gallagher
The book about mindfulness, newly purchased through Book Depository for dealing with anxiety and PTSD was recommended by my therapist. I visualised myself studiously poring over it and completing the various sections of the workbook, each of the completed sections a stepping-stone to wellness, wholeness and peace. However, opening the cover and seeing the word ‘anxiety’ in the title struck me down. I cried so much I couldn’t get past the first page. I never read the book.
Sue Wootton
Canadian physician Sir William Osler (1849-1919), sometimes called ‘the father of modern medicine’, urged doctors to maintain a lifetime habit of reading. In an address delivered at the opening of the Boston Medical Library in 1901, he said:
To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.”
But, important though it was to keep up-to-date with the latest scientific findings, he did not want clinicians to limit themselves to reading medical texts. Osler advocated also reading broadly and deeply in the humanities and literature. He believed that “for physicians to be properly educated to practice their art, knowledge of the science of medicine … must be supplemented by familiarity with the humanities.”
[Read more…] about “Start at once a bedside library”: narrative competence and medicine
Grace Carlyle
DECEPTION OF TIREDNESS
buried under a wait of exhaustion
there is no fragrance in my words
fold the flowers away,
the sun shines
why do I hear rain?
Illness has been a common thread throughout my life, that of those close to me or my own. It set me on a course that would ultimately prove against me, yet I determined to grow up strong, healthy and financially independent – if it killed me.
[Read more…] about Through the fog: book by book, word by word
Sue Wootton
Save the world? Let’s all start reading again, that’s what I say. Reading a book is an intensely personal activity. It’s just you and the words, make of them what you will. People can tell you what a book means to them, but no one can tell you what it means to you. That’s between you and the book. To find out, you need to come to know the book and your own mind. Those discoveries are generated in the private act of exploration we call reading. To be immersed in a book is to inhabit a creative and enchanted space, which is no bad thing to practice doing in a world that has come to feel distressingly devoid of magic. Because what is magic, if not another word for hope?
Here’s some of the fiction and non-fiction that I especially enjoyed in 2016. One way or another all these books address aspects of health, illness and wellbeing. Most of these titles are fairly recent publications, although I’ve included several older books that were new to me. Perhaps there’s something here to keep you company over the holidays, or better still to place on your bedside table to be part of your new year’s resolution to read for half an hour every night before sleep … to read yourself to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream …
Dr Lynley Hood
In 2009, author Lynley Hood was diagnosed with a rare eye disorder. In this video, the audio of which is transcribed below, she describes the devastation of ‘becoming illiterate’.
For every person who’s got a white cane or a guide dog there are ten people who are struggling to read, and they’re very frightened about what the future holds. I was reading in bed one evening and my left eye went blurry. I thought, time to put the light out. And in the morning it was still blurry…
Richard German
From as early as I can remember, I loved reading. Many of my early memories are associated with books. I always had a predilection for non-fiction, and my fiction tastes ran primarily to science fiction. Through my early and mid-teenage years the love affair with books continued, despite the predations of School Cert, University Entrance and Bursary.
But then I achieved my teenage ambition of gaining entry to medical school…
