Salka Valka by Halldór Laxness: she needs to be alone Reviewed by David S. Baldwin, Professor of Psychiatry Clinical and Experimental Sciences Academic Unit Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, United Kingdom Email: dsb1@soton.ac.uk Born in Reykjavík in April 1902, Halldór Guðjónsson (he changed his name to Halldór Kiljan Laxness in 1923) […]
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The Reading Room: The Other Side of Silence
The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir of Depression by Linda Gask. Vie Books, 2015 Reviewed by Dr Lilian Hickey There is a shocking, but humane and tender poetry in George Eliot’s lines in Middlemarch which refer to the deafening ‘roar’ of life that might lie ‘on the other side of silence’ in our […]
The Screening Room: a review of the Lebanese film Ghadi
Music overcoming disability – Ghadi, Lebanon, 2013, directed by Amin Dora Reviewed by Dr Reem Gaafar, a Sudanese doctor, writer, filmmaker and graphic designer A special screening will take place at the Polish Cultural Centre, 238 King Street, Hammersmith, London W6 0RF, Sapphire Room, 2nd Floor, at 8pm Friday 3rd June 2016. To book […]
Medicine Unboxed: Students 2016
Deadline: Midnight Sunday 3 July 2016 Medicine Unboxed 2016 is on the theme of Wonder and takes place in Cheltenham on 19-20 November 2016. Medicine Unboxed: Students brings together students of the arts, health and medicine to present their work and thinking at Medicine Unboxed. Applications are invited for a 10-minute presentation at Medicine […]
Art, Life and Illness
David Marron: Encounters Columba Quigley David Marron, Geras 3, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist and GV Art, London I was fortunate to catch this exhibition, held over the May Bank Holiday weekend at Lumen Studios, The Crypt, St John on Bethnal Green. David Marron is both an artist and a paramedic. The exhibition […]
The Screening Room: Cannes Film Festival Preview
Cannes, films and Medicine The forthcoming Cannes Film Festival (11-22nd May 2016) is described by its director Thierry Fremaux as ‘A celebration of cinematographic art’ http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en.html. If you are lucky enough to be attending the glittering, entertaining and thought-provoking extravaganza, here are five films in the official selection exploring the lives of patients and […]
The Reading Room: When Breath Becomes Air
Hope, Oncology and Death Seamus O’Mahony When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. London: The Bodely Head, 2016. Paul Kalanithi was nearing the end of his neurosurgical training at Stanford when aged thirty-six, he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. He had never smoked. He was referred to an oncologist specializing in […]
A little Danish mermaid and other stories (of rare diseases)
A reflection on Sofie Layton’s Under the Microscope by Giovanni Biglino (Bristol Heart Institute, Bristol, UK) The voice of a little girl and the sunlight filtering through layers of green batik – a series of coral-like structures representing real heart models displayed under bell jars – anatomical drawings – and the story of […]
The Screening Room: The Aftermath of Stroke
Building bridges: two films about self-discovery after stroke Dr Khalid Ali Two recent films portray the aftermaths of stroke from different viewpoints: that of a stroke survivor in My Beautiful Broken Brain (UK 2016, directed Lotje Sodderland and Sophie Anderson, currently showing on Netflix) and that of the daughter of a stroke survivor in You See Me […]
The Reading Room: ‘Making Medical Knowledge’
Making Medical Knowledge By Miriam Solomon Oxford University Press, 2015 Reviewed by Dr Jonathan Fuller, University of Toronto We should forgive anyone unfamiliar with recent trends in ‘scientific medicine’ for thinking that within scientific medicine there are now multiple medicines to choose from: evidence-based medicine (EBM), translational medicine, narrative medicine, personalized medicine, […]