By Manon Mathias This round table discussion at the University of Glasgow on 3 November 2017 featured a series of interventions from researchers examining digestive health from the 1800s onwards. Presentations were given by Evelien Lemmens (QMUL), Manon Mathias (University of Glasgow), Ian Miller (Ulster University) and Matthew Smith (University of Strathclyde), and the session […]
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Two Bullets: One to the Head, Another to the Heart
The Unknown Sweet Potato Seller, directed by Ahmed Roshdy, with Khaled Abol Naga and Tara Emad. Winner of Best Animated Film at the Miami Short Film Festival 2017. Reviewed by Professor Robert Abrams, Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, Weill Cornell University Mr Abol Naga, who plays himself as the film’s central character, is an important […]
Book Review: Subprime Health
Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine, edited by Nadine Ehlers and Leslie R. Hinkson, University of Minnesota Press, 2017, 248 pages, £86 (£21.99). Reviewed by Jenny Tsai I’ve always found an appropriate similitude between the words “inequity” and “iniquity.” Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine, edited by Nadine Ehlers and Leslie […]
The Feverish State and Syncretic Holism: The Re-assertion of Oral Tradition in Medicine
Oral tradition in medicine is the original form of medical treatment based on specificities and the context in which a patient is located. This tradition is fundamental to many formal and informal systems of medicine but it is highly visible in tribal medicine. The essential features of traditional healing systems have not been documented […]
A Helical Tangle
This is a guest post by Rebecca Marshall. Rebecca has just graduated from UCL Medical School, having intercalated in Global Health. She is currently undertaking an MSc in Medical Anthropology, also at UCL. Her main interests include the intersections between medical anthropology, global health and bioethics, particularly in the insight Applied Medical Anthropology can offer […]
What is Global Palliative Care When it’s at Home (or in Someone’s Home?)
This guest blog post is by Dr Guy Schofield, a palliative care registrar from the UK who is working on his PhD in Uganda funded by a Wellcome Trust Society and Ethics Fellowship. I sit here writing this in Kampala at the Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care in Africa (IHPCA), nestled in the compound […]
North West Interdisciplinary Medical Humanities Postgraduate Workshop
The North West Interdisciplinary Medical Humanities Hub are hosting a free postgraduate workshop at Lancaster University on the 19th of April 2018, with a keynote address to be delivered by Dr James Stark of Leeds University (@KingTekkers). The one-day workshop is supported by an ESRC Interdisciplinary Event Fund grant, and it will focus on the […]
How Do We Find Meaning When We Are Going to Die?
In this podcast Dr Khalid Ali, Medical Humanities film and media correspondent, interviews Dr Amy Hardie at the Sudan Independent Film Festival where she held a training workshop for film students. Dr Amy Hardie is a documentary film-maker with several international awards. Her documentary feature, The Edge of Dreaming, was the first Scottish feature […]
The Taste of Marmalade: My Top Ten Films of 2017
By Dr Khalid Ali, Film and Media Correspondent In 2017 the British healthcare system was dominated by news of escalating pressure on hospital beds and crisis alerts on a daily basis, longer than ever waiting times for clinic appointments, cancellation of elective procedures, and a surgeon signing his name on the livers of patients he […]
Daniel Goldberg on Shame, Stigma and Medicine
The current issue of Medical Humanities is guest-edited by Luna Dolezal and Barry Lyons and focuses on ‘Shame, Stigma and Medicine’. Daniel S. Goldberg’s article, ‘Pain, objectivity and history: understanding pain stigma,’ is our editor’s choice in this issue, and so is free for everyone to access. In the article, Goldberg argues that sufferers […]