Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

A lesson from Africa

18 September 2017 4 Comments

Mary Morwood

It always seems impossible until it is done.” – Nelson Mandela.

“Me, judgmental? Of course not! … that’s how I saw myself until I met Meniswa. I was in Africa, six months into my 2 year physiotherapy assignment with NZ Volunteer Services Abroad.

“Come with me, Mary” said the tireless Xhosa social worker. “I want you on this home visit”. We endured the usual bumpy ride on the potholed Transkei road, and then walked across the fields to reach a house. It looked reasonably comfortable, by Transkei standards. So far so good.

There was no response to our knocks and calls. We wandered around the back of the house, past goats and chickens. We found our client, a 16 year old with severe athetoid cerebral palsy. She was slithering around on a grass mat filthy with flies, chicken droppings and blood from her period. A dilapidated wheelchair was parked nearby. The cheerful chickens were her only company.

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Metaphor and mental illness

18 September 2017 1 Comment

Heather Bauchop

I was meaning to write something about darkness and the health implications of street lights, but I’ve been swept away by Jay Griffiths’ 2016 memoir Tristimania: a diary of manic depression . Having previously read Griffiths’ Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, I had meant to track down more of her writing, but had forgotten. It was a joyous surprise to find Tristimania on the Dunedin Public Library’s Book Bus.

An award-winning non-fiction writer, Griffiths recounts a harrowing year of illness with a prolonged episode of mixed-state hypomania (for which Griffiths prefers to use ‘manic depression’ or the older term ‘tristimania’).

Anatomy nesting dolls

11 September 2017 1 Comment

Kezia Field

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.” Leonardo da Vinci

For years, as as an art educator and artist, I’ve had an ongoing preoccupation with body parts, especially with anatomical systems and human organs as artistic imagery. This fascination has lead me to research a variety of vintage anatomical illustrations by scientific and medical artists such as Georg Stubbs, William Braune, Nicolas Henri Jacob, Anton Nuhn and Leonardo da Vinci.

These illustrators were professional artists with advanced education in both the life sciences and visual communication. I like the idea that these artists collaborated with scientists and physicians, and that they transformed complex visual information into visual images with potential to communicate to broad audiences. As digital photography and other digital media have come to dominate the medical illustration world, the demand for these artists has declined. So, I say to myself, perhaps my art can fill this void.

Discovering kawakawa

11 September 2017 Leave a Comment

Lorraine Ritchie

variations poem — Image by Janet de Wagt, from ‘Listening with my heart: poems by Aotearoa New Zealand nurses‘.

Sometimes when we are introduced for the first time to something we are not familiar with – an author, a singer, a type of food, a breed of dog – it suddenly starts appearing everywhere. The ubiquitous kawakawa plant was not so ubiquitous to me. I had not really noticed the lush green heart-shaped leaves nor recognised the plant by name until I received a pencil drawing of a kawakawa plant entwined with an intravenous fluid delivery system, drawn by artist Janet de Wagt to illustrate a poem in the book of poetry by New Zealand nurses that I was editing. This beautiful drawing, a delicate and powerful meeting of Western and Māori medicine, piqued my interest and I wanted to know more.

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Navigating the entangled and “infuriatingly intricate” world

11 September 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

Consider the term ‘medical science’. Easy. For most of us it conjures laboratories, test-tubes, scientists in white coats, evidence-based research, miracle medical breakthroughs. Medical science trips off the tongue so naturally – it’s surely one word, not two. The bond between ‘medical’ and ‘science’ is super-glued. It’s solid and unbreakable. We’ve closed the gap between these words, left no cracks to fall through. Medical science: a term to lean on, a term to trust.

Now consider the term ‘medical humanities’. Not so easy. Or so I surmise from the confused look on people’s faces when I tell them that the medical humanities are my field of research. It’s as if the words ‘medical’ and ‘humanities’ are unrelated strangers who need to be coaxed from separate, distant rooms and forced together for an awkward conversation where neither can quite understand the other’s language or point of view. What on earth would they talk about? What would be the point? What’s the use of the medical humanities? Where’s the miracle medical breakthrough in that research?

First born: June 1959. Radcliffe, Manchester.

4 September 2017 2 Comments

Wendy Fearnley

My labour started at 8am but we waited eleven hours before going to the large Edwardian house that had been converted to a maternity hospital. Brian, my husband, dropped me off and I was taken to a room with four beds, three of which were already occupied. I was instructed to get undressed and into bed. Nobody in the room spoke and then I realised that the woman next to me was not sleeping but sobbing quietly. She pulled the covers over her head.

The woman opposite mouthed, ‘Her baby was stillborn.’