I have just returned from Medicine Unboxed in Cheltenham. It was a brilliant weekend, inspiring as ever.
My imagination was particularly captured by the poet Jo Shapcott. She discussed the importance of imagery and metaphor in illness and disease, and how this frames a person's existence. This allows patients' to take on their own identity and construct their new reality; to process their emotions and feelings about the present and the future. The ability to imagine other existances is what makes us human, and feeds our curiosities. This projection of imagination into others' experiences is the definition of empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Unfortunately empathy is a quality in medicine that is sometimes lacking in some doctors. Whether that is due to doctor personality and beliefs, or poor training, or time constraints, I'm not certain. But empathy is crucial in modern medicine to express the humanity in an often alien and overwhelmingly scientific culture.
Jo Shapcott read this poem at the conference as an example of what empathy is: to totally project yourself into another experience. Go inside the tree is a beautiful lesson on the relationship between imagination and empathy; the need to take a huge leap of imagination in order to get to the truth of a situation.
I finished reading this book last week, it was the first book I have read in ages, and it was amazing.
"There’s a photo on my wall of a woman I’ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape. She looks straight into the camera and smiles, hands on hips, dress suit neatly pressed, lips painted deep red. It’s the late 1940s and she hasn’t yet reached the age of thirty. Her light brown skin is smooth, her eyes still young and playful, oblivious to the tumor growing inside her—a tumor that would leave her five children motherless and change the future of medicine. Beneath the photo, a caption says her name is “Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.”
No one knows who took that picture, but it’s appeared hundreds of times in magazines and science textbooks, on blogs and laboratory walls. She’s usually identified as Helen Lane, but often she has no name at all. She’s simply called HeLa, the code name given to the world’s first immortal human cells—her cells, cut from her cervix just months before she died.
Her real name is Henrietta Lacks."
-excerpt from opening chapter
Simply put, the book flits back and forth from two viewpoints: one of science and one of humanity.
The book is about the life of Henrietta Lacks and her family, the woman who's biopsied cancerous cells were the first cells to survive and replicate in cell media, and was used in numerous pioneering scientific experiements, responsible for important drug developments amongst other things. Underneath this very human aspect, the science behind cell culturing and what happened to these cells is weaved thougout, explained simply and succinctly.
Henrietta Lacks
Behind the wonderful discoveries that were occuring in science in the 1950s that are acknowledged in this book and the significant consequences of these, there is a great sadness in the book surrounding how the actions of the scientists, doctors and media affected Henrietta's family so many years after her cells were taken.
I was shocked about the scrupulous medical ethics surrounding medical experiments and patient consent that was happening not so long ago. The book raises important questions about appropriate communication between doctors and patients, as well as ethical issues surounding consent, the monetary value of medicine and science and ownership of patient cells.
The book is writen so sensitively and transparently, as the author takes the reader with her on her journey to find out the truth about Henrietta and her cells. It becomes very obvious how genuinely the author cares about Henrietta's story and what is to become of her family, allowing the reader to develop empathy with their situation.
This would be a brilliant informative book to read in medical school, not least because it explains all the science bits in such as easy understanddable way, but is also an important lesson on how a doctors' actions and words can deeply affect not only one patient, but several generations related to that patient. I found this book very moving and inspiring, and has definately influenced and informed my future clinical practice.
Care and Cure: Symposium by the Sea 2012
This conference looks quite good, and only down the road...
The 6th annual Symposium by the Sea, hosted by MEMO at Swansea University, will take place on June 14-15 2012 in the College of Arts and Humanities. Themes to be considered at this event will include: writing about health and disease; representing illness and disability in texts and images; defining and living with disability; medical education and medical practitioners; hospitals; surgery; curing the soul; pharmacology.
Key to the conference discussions will be the transitions visible in the evidence between the medieval and early-modern periods, such as the increased licensing and control of medical practice and the concomitant marginalization of practitioners whose skills and abilities (and gender) excluded them from the new and self-conscious profession.
The conference will draw upon the existing strength of research into the medical humanities at Swansea, and will combine local expertise with the invited contributions of leading scholars in the field, including Professors Monica Green (Arizona State University) and Peter Biller (University of York). A key aim of the conference is to include junior and postgraduate researchers, for whom a series of workshops will be organised on day one of the conference, culminating in three postgraduate papers by new researchers in the area of medical humanities.
"Paintings in Hospitals is a registered charity that uses art and creativity to reduce sickness, anxiety and stress in UK healthcare facilities. Through our work we create environments that improve health, wellbeing and the healthcare experience for patients, their families and staff."
The belief that fuels the work of this charity is art promotes healing. This claim was acknowledged in the Department of Health and Arts Council England publication, 2007: A prospectus for arts and health (an interesting, if not long, read!).
As well as their hospital art loan scheme, they also organise artist residencies into hospitals...need to learn more about this, sounds fun!
A note about the patterned background I've pinched!-
In 1951 the Festival of Britain at the Southbank in London aimed to celebrate the exciting new advances in art and science happening in a nation rebuilding itself after the war.
A pattern group of established artists was especially commisioned for this event to produce prints for textiles and interiors. Their inspiration was the xray crystallography images of atoms. This was a relatively new technology, and it was a leading crytallographer, Dr Helen Megaw, who wanted to bring these beautiful inticate patterns to the attention of the public.
Helen Megaw
I love these images, and how the patterns were used in all sorts of random accessories for the home, including kitchen ware, wall paper, carpets, and fabric for furniture.
Lace with Haemoglobin pattern
The images of the insulin and haemoglobin molecules are my favourite patterns. They are such important molecules physiologically and yet in day to day life rarely thought about. The patterns are so simple and beautiful, I like the idea of them being a celebration of their function!
Insulin
I think this work is pretty inspiring, makes me want to start a textile project about histology...
Video from the Wellcome Collection about the pattern group:-
I thought I should probably start this blogging business by talking about the name I've pinched for this blog!
John wells (1907-2000) was a doctor who trained in London, and attended evening classes at St Martin's school of art. After several years of hospital practice, he became a GP and moved to the Scilly Isles in the '30s, where he travelled between patients on a motorboat! He became friendly with the St Ives group of artists including Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, and after the second world war decided on a career switch from doctor to professional artist.
Wells works in abstraction, starting from recognisable sources of nature and the Cornish landscape. I love the neutral colours and limited pallate, and the interaction between geometric shapes. A lot of his pieces also create a sense of space and movement. I find his work quite calming, and reminds me of home.
'The fragile cell' comes from the exhibition title of a John Wells retrospective at the Tate St Ives in 1998. I have the exhibition poster on my wall in my bedroom in my family home in Cornwall, and I can stare at it for hours. The title 'the fragile cell' has always appealed to me, it gets my imagination going. I find the story behind Wells' life and career just as captivating as his work. I find great comfort in the fact he was able to find room for both medicine and art in his life.
