conversations about medicine and life
We publish a range of perspectives on health and wellbeing, especially reflective work which fleshes out the biomedical version of illness and disability.
Professor Terence Doyle
In King Henry IV, the doughty Sir John Falstaff asks “Sirrah . . . what says the doctor to my water.” To which his page replies “He said, sir, the water was a good healthy water but for the party that owned it he might have more diseases than he knows for.” Urinoscopy, or the diagnosis of disease by studying the urine in the absence of the patient, was common in seventeenth century medicine, although the practice was outlawed by the College of Physicians in 1555.
Claire Macindoe
In 1939, a thirteen year old boy called Roger Kingsford was admitted to Nelson Hospital with osteomyelitis, a septic infection of the bone in his right leg. The infection was non-responsive to sulphonamides, the only antibiotic treatment available at the time. Despite a preventative amputation, the infection spread and Roger developed osteomyelitis in his right arm and left leg. During the next few years he became chronically and seriously ill. In the early 1940s, after hearing reports about a new drug which was being successfully used to treat bacterial infections in soldiers, Roger’s parents appealed to the New Zealand government for access to penicillin.
[Read more…] about The ‘Miracle Drug’: penicillin’s first use in New Zealand
Charlotte Parallel
We know our heartbeat intimately. We can feel it through our skin and fingers as the internal pulsing of blood, muscles contracting and expanding in a rhythm that is our own. To hear our sinus rhythm ‘outside’ our body is quite an unusual experience, but this was the basis of my participatory sound-works show, Waves and bodies in waves in bodies.
Dr Joe Baker
The 2016 North and East Otago Literature is Therapy Society (NEOLIThS) conference was held in the seaside village of Karitane last February. The keynote speaker was Professor Ivor G. Rudge who believes many patients are unhappy with their health providers but are unwilling to complain. Professor Rudge asks patients to write down their grievances. The process of transcribing their thoughts to paper is therapeutic for the patients and allows them to take more ownership of the issues. Professor Rudge also believes that disseminating patients’ concerns can inform health providers about what really irks patients. Professor Rudge presented various case studies. The first was a patient describing a typical encounter with his GP who we have called George (not his real name).
Dr Leah Kaminsky
A physician works at the border between science and the soul … the wise doctor probes not only the organs of his patient but also his feelings and emotions, his fears and hopes, his regrets and his goals. And to accomplish that most important task of applying wisdom, the physician also needs to take his own emotional temperature.” – Jerome Groopman, in the foreword to Writer, M. D., a collection of works by doctor-writers edited by Melbourne GP and writer Leah Kaminsky.
Kaminsky writes: Writing for me can be a kind of thermometer, where I check the rising mercury of my own beliefs, biases and uncertainties. It is not a place I hope to find answers—rather, I use the blank page to try and understand what kind of questions a doctor needs to ask. My medicine has always fed and informed my writing. But more importantly, literature has, I hope, made me a better physician.
Laurence Fearnley
Novelist Laurence Fearnley walks on Dunedin’s Signal Hill every day, and as she walks she creates a map of the scents she encounters.
Paying attention to scent has resulted in a more intimate response to landscape, one that grows stronger with each change of season as my daily walks nurture my familiarity with the ground I cover. Every day Signal Hill grows more interesting and more beautiful.”
