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
Like most works of art, William Hogarth’s The Company of Undertakers has hidden depths. The early eighteenth century was a time of increasing freedom of expression, associated with the rise of a thinking middle class in society, after the Revolution of 1688. Hypocrisy in social and moral values came under particular scrutiny; and satire was a popular vehicle for such criticism.
Sue Wootton
There is a long and noble tradition of doctors who write about medicine. The best of this writing brings to the page powerful insights about what it means to be a human being—the kind of insights that are sparked when the steel of medical science is struck by the flint of medicine’s art. Language is one of the key medical arts, and memoir and essays make wonderful genres for the development of such sparks.
[Read more…] about 4 doctor writers: Oliver Sacks, Paul Kalanithi, Gavin Francis and David Galler
Annette Rose
Everyone knows what a scream sounds like. But do you know what it looks like?
This is what a scream looks like.
This is a mask from the Quake Mask Project, a mask-making project for children affected by the 2010-11 Christchurch earthquakes.
[Read more…] about The colours screamed: terror and creativity
Barbara Brookes
How many of us know people with an implant of some kind? Otago Professor of Neurosurgery, Dirk De Ridder, gave a fascinating address recently on the history of his field, noting that these days implants provide a way forward for a number of problems. Cochlear implants are one example, but there are many other bits of metal and plastic which are used to assist bodies to function, to do away with pain and for cosmetic enhancement. So the cyborg is amongst us—those with metal hips, plastic breasts, and implanted pacemakers sending out electrical pulses.
[Read more…] about Cyborgs on screen – and sitting next to us
Annette Rose
I heard it said recently that “imagination has taken a rest”, but has it? A mask making project in 2010-11 for children affected by the Christchurch earthquakes suggests otherwise. Here is one of my favourite mask stories from the Quake Mask Collection: a mask that illustrates a young person’s dialogue with death. [Read more…] about Facing down Thanatos: the road to recovery in a landscape of ruin
Barbara Brookes and Charlotte Paul
‘The Faculty of Medicine is undertaking major course revision’. This statement is from a 1995 University of Otago memo. Part of this revision focus was a proposal that the Humanities Division provide a suite of Elective papers for third year medical students. There was already a self-directed option on offer, in which—in consultation with a willing staff member—students had 10 hours a week for five weeks to follow a particular interest. As classes had grown in size, this system had become unwieldy and it was suggested that a more systematic programme of Humanities Electives would broaden students’ appreciation of the art, as well as the science, of medicine.
[Read more…] about Curricular Conundrums: the place of Humanities in Medicine 20 years on
