Tag: humanities
Introduction to the Medical Humanities: Art Analysis Task
We had fun today: the Medical Humanities students presented their art analysis task, and we are now ⅔ of the way through the 2-week course. The students were asked to choose an art work related to health and/or medicine, and talk about it for 5-10 minutes during our session. Special thanks to the faculty who […]
34. Pig Portraits
September 7, 2022 Pig portraits by Lisa, specially delivered by tita Suzette. Muchas, muchas gracias! Dave and Doreen, oil on linen. Also: 7 of 20 done (35%)! Just passed the ⅓ mark for radiation. [The last photo shows me, Lisa, and the pigs when she visited in January 2023]
16. Pegfilgrastim, and Doreen too
June 3, 2022 Update. Day 5 post-chemotherapy, and day 4 post-pegfilgrastim injection (recall: for increasing the infection-fighting white blood cells which can be depleted during chemotherapy). So far I have not seen crazy side effects of chemotherapy yet, except maybe the need to eat small frequent meals to prevent nausea. Hair is still intact, it’s […]
Critique: Pandemic! A Winter Intensive.
Yesterday was the last day of our Winter Intensive (a whole semester’s worth of material crammed into two weeks) called Beyond Chaos – Critique: PANDEMIC! According to the course description from convenors Prof. Desmond Manderson and Dr. Nick Cheesman, it is “not about the Coronavirus pandemic itself. It is, rather, a response to it. The […]
Medical Humanities at the Philippine General Hospital, in the time of COVID-19
In April, 2020 a call went out for photos and written pieces chronicling the pandemic experience at the University of the Philippines and Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) – the plan was to collect these for the PGH Human Spirit Project. The pandemic isn’t over yet, but here are the fruits of that labor: a 3-volume […]
King Lear and the Not So Happy Ending
Greg Doran, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, thinks the Bubonic plague helped shape William Shakespeare’ writing. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/dec/13/a-happy-ending-for-king-lear-trauma-of-plague-caused-shakespeare-to-change-plays-finale We studied King Lear sometime in college. Yes I found it depressing. Interesting that the source play (that Shakespeare based his King Lear on) had a happy ending, but he was so traumatized by all the […]
My Medical Humanities Journey
In the post introducing the blog (WORMHOLE), I mention that I’ve thought of the sciences and arts as two separate entities, with me having one foot in the sciences and the other in the arts and hopping in an “all or nothing” way between those two. I think the best illustration for this dichotomy happened […]
Nurses are Superheroes
A lot of the published fiction and nonfiction prose in the medical humanities deals with physicians. Think Atul Gawande’s books and Robin Cook’s novels (Elaine and I did a term paper for that in our college Humanities 103 class looong ago). Same thing with TV shows – the likes of Dr. Kildare, Doogie Howser, M.D. […]
