Medical students and faculty explore the medical humanities for diverse reasons: as a medium for self-reflection, a means to cultivate professionalism and humanism, and a way to gain an appreciation for the broader contexts in which illness and health occur. One important area for development is increasing the exposure of learners and clinicians of various levels of training to the medical humanities and to role models in the field. Student-led programs in the medical humanities at the American Medical Student Association (...) (AMSA) address these needs by offering unique opportunities for learning and sharing experiences. AMSA programs connect physicians-in-training using technology to create virtual communication and learning opportunities. These include monthly book discussion webinars, the Writers' Institute and the Medical Humanities Scholars Program (MHSP). (shrink)

The paper offers the concept of reversing the medical humanities. In agreement with the call from Kristeva et al. to recognise the bidirectionality of the medical humanities, I propose moving beyond debates of attitude and aptitude in the application and engagement (either friendly or critical) of humanities to/in medicine, by considering a reversal of the directions of epistemic movement (a reversal of the flow of knowledge). I situate my proposal within existing articulations of the field found in the medical humanities (...) meta-literature, pointing to a gap in the current terrain. I then develop the proposal by unfolding three reasons why we might gain something from exploring a reversed knowledge flow. First, a reversed knowledge flow seems to be an inherent—but still to be articulated—possibility in medical humanities and thus provides an opportunity for more knowledge. Second, the current unidirectionality of the field is founded on an inconsistency in the depiction of the connection between medicine and humanities, which risks creating the very divide that medical humanities set out to bridge. Practising a reversal may help avoid this divide. And third, a reversal might help rebalance the internal epistemic power, so as to motivate less external scepticism and in turn displace more external epistemic power towards medical humanities. I end the paper with a remark on precursors for a reversal, and ideas for where to go from here. (shrink)

Throughout its fifty-year history, the role of the medical humanist and even the name “medical humanities” has remained raw, dynamic and contested. What do we mean when we call ourselves “humanists” and our practice “medical humanities?” To address these questions, we turn to the concept of origin narratives. After explaining the value of these stories, we focus on one particularly rich origin narrative of the medical humanities by telling the story of how a group of educators, ethicists, and scholars struggling (...) to define their relatively new field rediscovered the studia humanitatis, a Renaissance curriculum for learning and teaching. Our origin narrative is composed of two intertwined stories—the history of the studia humanitatis itself and the story of the scholars who rediscovered it. We argue that as an origin narrative the studia humanitatis grounds the medical humanities as both an engaged moral practice and pedagogical project. In the latter part of the paper, we use this origin narrative to show how medical humanists working in translational science can use their understanding of their historical roots to do meaningful work in the world. (shrink)

Eduard Pernkopf’s Atlas of Topographical and Applied Human Anatomy is a four-volume anatomical atlas published between 1937 and 1963, and it is generally believed to be the most comprehensive, detailed, and accurate anatomy textbook ever created. However, a 1997 investigation into “Pernkopf’s Atlas,” raised troubling questions regarding the author’s connection to the Nazi regime and the still unresolved issue of whether its illustrations relied on Jewish or other political prisoners, including those executed in Nazi concentration camps. Following this investigation, the (...) book was removed from both anatomy classrooms and library bookshelves. A debate has ensued over the book’s continued use, and justification for its use has focused on two issues: there is no definitive proof the book includes illustrations of concentration camp prisoners or Jewish individuals in particular, and there is no contemporary equivalent to this text. However, both points fail to address the central importance of the book, not simply as part of anatomy instruction, but also as a comprehensive historical narrative with important ethical implications. Having encountered a first edition copy, these authors were given a unique opportunity to engage with the text through the respective humanities lenses of history, ethics, and narrative. In doing so, an instructive and profound irony has surfaced: Nazis, including Pernkopf, viewed specific groups of people as less than human, giving rise to unthinkable atrocities perpetuated against them. However, these same individuals became the sources for the creation of the Atlas, which served as the model for primary instruction on the human form for more than half of the twentieth century. In this article, we recount the difficult and somewhat opaque provenance of this book, engage the ethical questions surrounding both its creation and its use, and ultimately propose a pedagogical methodology for its continued use in medical education. (shrink)

Values and attitudes are strongly influenced by the subjective elements of the organizational culture of the medical school. The objective of this research was to better understand the medical school environment and the difficulties in training doctors in humanism in clinical practice. Qualitative research focused on subjective aspects of the teacher-student relationship, such as ethics and respect for differences, was conducted in a traditional Brazilian medical school. We used the technique of ethnographic observation and interviews with students and teachers. The (...) data were analysed according to three categories: 1. self and other, 2. misuse of technology, and 3. models of teacher-student interactions. Over 12 months, we observed 22 teachers and 128 students, and we interviewed 9 teachers and 19 students, who were recognized as key-interviewees. Our analyses revealed that the medical school environment enables doctors and medical students’ feelings of intellectual superiority, selfish and excessive competitiveness; inability to see the patient as a whole; overvaluation and excessive use of technology; role modelling of non-empathic behaviours; and behaviours showing disrespect, discrimination, and violence. These findings reveal attitudes that hamper the doctor-patient relationship, and some underlying issues of critical importance to the humanistic training of medical students. This study shows the need for institutional humanistic values to be adopted and applied to everyone. Perhaps an educational process that uses ethics more than academic disciplines should be used as a method of thinking and acting, which may encourage institutional changes that improve medical education as a whole. (shrink)

The personhood of the physician is a crucial element in accomplishing the goals of medicine. We review claims made on behalf of the humanities in guiding professional identity formation. We explore the dichotomy that has evolved, since the Renaissance, between the humanities and the natural sciences. The result of this evolution is an historic misconstrual, preoccupying educators and diverting them from the moral development of physicians. We propose a curricular framework based on the recovery of Aristotelian concepts that bridge identity (...) and activity. The humanities and the natural sciences, jointly and severally, can fulfill developmental, characterological and instrumental purposes. (shrink)

As befits an emerging field of enquiry, there is on-going discussion about the scope, role and future of the medical humanities. One relatively recent contribution to this debate proposes a differentiation of the field into two distinct terrains, ‘medical humanities’ and ‘health humanities,’ and calls for a supersession of the former by the latter. In this paper, we revisit the conceptual underpinnings for a distinction between ‘the medical’ and ‘health’ by looking at the history of an analogous debate between ‘medical (...) geography’ and ‘the geographies of health’ that has, over the last few years, witnessed a re-blurring of the distinction. Highlighting the value of this debate within the social sciences for the future development of the medical humanities, we call for scholars to take seriously the challenges of critical and cultural theory, community-based arts and health, and the counter-cultural creative practices and strategies of activist movements in order to meet the new research challenges and fulfill the radical potential of a critical medical humanities. (shrink)

Discourse from within the medical humanities field focuses on the importance of humanizing medical practice—that is, reaffirming liberal humanist interpretations of the person in order to promote empathetic engagement in healthcare. This perspective encourages doctors to abandon atomistic thinking in order to see patients in a more holistic light. Support for the personalization of healthcare is also prevalent within cultural discourse related to patient empowerment and participatory medicine. Despite the undoubtedly positive goals of both popular and institutional rethinkings of the (...) patient, I argue that these conceptualizations effectively reinforce unproductive humanistic ideas about the body. Indeed, the same thinking that idealizes completeness and autonomy also produces the very conceptualization that medical humanities says must be reimagined—that is, what Cary Wolfe identifies as the “fetishization of agency” and a view of the diseased body as something that can be taken apart and put back together. This paper therefore questions the humanistic focus of some scholars’ expressed mandate for the medical humanities. Applying the posthumanist theories of Cary Wolfe and Jane Bennett, I will attempt to construct a more nuanced model of the human being within medicine that deprioritizes goals of heteronormative compliance and instead imagines the body as never complete in and of itself. In testing the viability of posthumanist models in this context, I will outline a way of reimagining the doctor-patient relationship that addresses the philosophical implications of the human as always already externalized, fragmentary, and coextensive with his or her environment. (shrink)