Volume 182 - Issue 8
Medical humanities: to cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always
Author: Jill Gordon
Med J Aust 2005; 182 (8): 430-432. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2005.tb06772.x
Published online: 18 April 2005
Published online: 18 April 2005
Jill Gordon
Director, Centre for Medical Humanities, University of Sydney, NSW 2006. jill.gordonATarts.usyd.edu.au
In reply: It may be possible to identify an approach that lies “somewhere between the sermonising of Gordon”, as Coote puts it, and the world-weariness of the master of ceremonies at the Kit Kat Club. Research in the social sciences suggests that we derive more personal happiness from positive experiences, including our social and intellectual pursuits, than from material possessions. These findings are probably due to the fact that positive experiences generate pleasant memories and a richer sense of personal identity. Positive experiences also have greater social value than possessions, being more easily shared with others.
Thinking and talking about new ideas provides a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction for students in the medical humanities. While mere “cases” may be, as Coote quotes, “routine, unglamorous, and socially explicable in matter-of-fact terms”, the doctor–patient relationship is not. Medicine provides a resource which can be used, as philosopher Martyn Evans has pointed out, to reflect on ourselves, express ourselves, develop ourselves, criticise ourselves and encounter ourselves.1 To do these things, we need tools constructed by the arts and humanities, as well as the sciences. Coote’s choice of reading material — the Companion encyclopedia of the history of medicine2 — is a great place to begin.
References
- Evans HM. Is medicine a “cultural good”? Med J Aust 2005; 182: 3-4.
- Bynum WF, Porter R, editors. Companion encyclopedia of the history of medicine. London: Routledge, 1993. i1085688
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