Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Hope in a bottle: the allure (and business) of self-medication

25 July 2016 Leave a Comment

Dr Barbara Brookes

maltexo — New Zealand Railways. Publicity Branch [ca 1940]. Courtesy National Library of New Zealand.

There is an irresistible lure to self-medication as the lines of herbal preparations, oils and supplements in supermarkets and specialty shops suggest. For companies, ‘health’ products are clearly good business. People like to feel that they are, in some way, in control of their own health. Proprietary firms have long catered to this desire which avoids an expensive and time-consuming visit to the doctor. Dunedin was home to a staple of my childhood days: the syrupy and sweet ‘Maltexo’ which my mother thought was very good for her five children; we happily downed tablespoons of it daily in the 1960s. [Read more…]

The Case of the Missing Body

18 July 2016 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

The language of the body is amazing… I couldn’t hear it but the physiotherapist could.” Jenny Powell

Like the ‘disembodied lady’ described by Oliver Sacks, poet and teacher Jenny Powell has lived her life without a sense of body. Confused and frustrated by her inability to feel connected to her joints and her movements, she started to investigate, piecing together a comprehensive picture of her condition. The result is a fascinating and informative book: The Case of the Missing Body (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2016)

“I give you my guessing tubes”: 4 poems by Rae Varcoe

18 July 2016 3 Comments

Dr Rae Varcoe was a Leukaemia and Lymphoma Physician at Auckland Hospital for 30 years. She has been a poetry reader for much longer and began writing verse at Victoria University’s inaugural MA class in 1997. Poetry has been one of the buttresses of her life in medicine.

Novels and medicine

18 July 2016 2 Comments

Dr Joe Baker

All you need to know about General Practice can be learnt from reading Austen.”

So said Anne, my GP training supervisor. Needless to say when it came to the final exam I fared poorly with the medical emergencies, although I did better with those patients who had complex interpersonal relationship problems.

[Read more…] about Novels and medicine

“That’s my stroke”: Expressive Arts Therapy with a survivor of stroke

11 July 2016 Leave a Comment

Rose Stanton

Arts Therapy is a form of psychotherapy which connects with a variety of theoretical frameworks. It is more focused on the creative process and self-understanding than on art as an end product. I practise the multimodal approach. This is the use of two or more expressive therapies to foster awareness, encourage emotional growth, and enhance relationships with others. The expressive arts therapies can be defined as “the use of art, music, dance/movement, drama, poetry/creative writing, play, and sandtray within the context of psychotherapy, counselling, rehabilitation or health care” Malchiodi (2005, p. 2).

Chemical legacies: Thalidomide in New Zealand

11 July 2016 Leave a Comment

Susanne M. Klausen

William Osler once said ‘one of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine’.^[1] Tragedies have unfolded when physicians and pharmacists, wooed by pharmaceutical companies as to the wonders of their products, have not heeded this advice.