Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Dangerous innovations: health professions for women

14 November 2016 Leave a Comment

Barbara Brookes

First Women's Medical College Building. Drexel University College of Medical Archives and Special Collections — First Women’s Medical College Building. Drexel University College of Medical Archives and Special Collections

Recently, at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, I opened a textbook on The Principles and Practice of Nursing by Joseph S. Longshore, published in 1842. Longshore’s book preceded Florence Nightingale’s much more famous 1859 Notes on Nursing. Joseph Longshore is the brother of a woman about whom I’m writing a biography. To my delight the fly page of the book was inscribed ‘To Hattie, With the Compliments of the Author’. Suddenly, with his handwriting there before me, I felt in touch with this remarkable man in a very personal way. To touch a page an author has inscribed is a tactile experience that digital archives lack.

Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

13 November 2016 1 Comment

Sounding a Sanatorium: The Waipiata Playscript

7 November 2016 1 Comment

Emily Duncan

Hamiltons above Waipiata - Stefan Lane — Hamiltons above Waipiata – Stefan Lane

By a curious irony of fate, the places to which we are sent when health deserts us are often singularly beautiful – Robert Louis Stevenson.

My recently completed playscript, Waipiata, is a dramatic treatment of the site of a tuberculosis sanatorium, “Orangapai”. Located in the Maniototo (Otago, New Zealand) on the northern slopes of the Rock and Pillar Ranges, Orangapai served as a sanatorium from 1914 until 1960.

Spirituality and its contents

7 November 2016 1 Comment

Dr Anna Holmes

Many people assume that religion is necessary for spirituality. In fact it is the other way round. Religion is a way of ordering spirituality. Spirituality is derived from the Latin spiritus meaning breath. Spirit is as essential to human beings as breath, connecting them to the transcendent. Breath connects them to the world from birth and a failure of breath disconnects them at death.

Juggling it all

7 November 2016 3 Comments

Sue Wootton
Juggling—it’s what many people feel they’re doing every day. Round and round go those balls: Job, Family, Cat-to-the-vet, Clean-the-house, Make-a-meal, Get-the-car-a-WOF, Finish-an-assignment, Cut-the-lawn, Grandma’s birthday, Christmas. So many people spend all day juggling, most with a gnawing sense of impending disaster. It’s so difficult to keep those balls in the air. No wonder people get tired; no wonder people occasionally drop the lot.

But see the busker at the Farmer’s Market standing serene and smiling in the crowd, juggling plastic ducks, a toilet plunger balanced on his chin. He doesn’t look tired at all. In fact, he’s smiling. He’s actually enjoying himself. When, inevitably, he occasionally drops a duck, he only laughs. He picks it up and starts again. He’s having fun. Remember fun? Jay the Juggler does.

[Read more…] about Juggling it all

The joy of blindfulness

31 October 2016 Leave a Comment

Julie Woods

Oh Helen Keller, where were you when I needed you and your wise words? Why didn’t I know of your observations of the world when I went blind? You too have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing. But why do their voices loom so large in our minds? If only I knew that sight was of the soul then perhaps my light may have come sooner.