conversations about medicine and life
We publish a range of perspectives on health and wellbeing, especially reflective or creative work which fleshes out the biomedical version of illness and disability.
Sue Wootton & Barbara Brookes
Corpus has had a great second year, publishing 138 posts on a wide variety of health-related topics by a wide variety of writers.
Corpus is taking a replenishing break over Christmas and New Year. While we’re away, dip into the Corpus archives for some great reading. Here’s a small selection of this year’s most popular posts to start you off:
Liz Breslin
And, hot off the press, the scorching new wellness trend set to take 2018 by storm is – drumroll, please – choreographed group laughter.
I made that up, of course. It’s not nearly gobbledy-gooky enough to pass for a wellness trend. But it has been said since Proverbs 17:22 that laughter is the best medicine. Well, what Proverbs 17:22 actually says is:
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
But ‘laughter is the best medicine’ has a better ring to it and it’s the sort of quasi-medical common sense that I’m absolutely inclined to believe.
Peter Wells
She has a lived-in face and a voice which speaks of late night music and low lights, a soft husky catch of a voice which always has at its end the suggestion of a laugh. But she’s serious, on the level, is Ronnie.
What’s your level of pain, one to ten?”
Peter, you don’t have to be in pain. Right?”
Peter Wells
Author Peter Wells was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and has found posting on Facebook about his treatment makes the experience easier to bear. He says the writing helps him to sort out things in his mind – ‘a sort of mental housecleaning’ – and the response he gets to the posts makes him feel connected and less alone. ‘In fact,’ he says, ‘it has been remarkably therapeutic.’ Here is one of those posts:
At times I open my eyes and I’m surprised to find I’m in a hospital room. I look around me and adjust. It’s by no means painful or awkward now – it’s just a new kind of normal – and I ask myself how I ended up here.
Barbara Brookes
Recently I visited the Foundling Museum, in Coram Fields, Bloomsbury, London. Near there, in 1989, my first son had played happily in Coram Fields, where no adults are allowed unless accompanied by children. Later, when my youngest son was around seven, I discovered Jamila Gavin’s Coram Boy, a gripping tale set in eighteenth century London and Gloucester, centered on the ‘Coram man’ who wanders the countryside glibly and deceivingly promising unwed mothers that he will deliver their babies to the Coram Foundling Hospital.
We read it together, hooked by the dark tale of cruelty to children and the boys that overcame their tragic beginnings.
Sue Wootton
In 1752, the London-based Gentleman’s Magazine published a review of an essay on sugar. The essay contained reports drawn from the Transactions of the Royal Society, and proved, concluded the reviewer, that sugar is “the most pleasant, salubrious, and useful vegetable to mankind.”
He went on:
A Dr Slare … relates that his Grandfather, who was a great eater of sugar, had all his teeth in his mouth at 80, strong and firm; never had any pains or soreness in his gums or teeth, which in 3 years came out, and he had a new set; and his hair grew darker, and he continued in health and strength till 100. The Great Duke of Beaufort, who died in 1702 aged 80, used to eat a pound of sugar daily. Being opened his viscera were as sound as a person of 20; never troubled with coughs, and had his teeth firm; his housekeeper gave this as a reason:
‘That which preserves apples and plums
will also preserve life and lungs.'”
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