The historian Roy Porter observes that “We turn doctors into heroes, yet feel equivocal about them […] Even in Greek times opinions about medicine were mixed; the word pharmakos meant both remedy and poison – ‘kill’ and ‘cure’ were apparently indistinguishable” (4). This paradoxical mixture of killing and curing is perhaps nowhere more visible than…
Author: Ramathi Bandaranayake
Leonard Woolf and the caregiver’s point of view
That Virginia Woolf suffered from mental illness throughout her life is well documented, including in her own writings, which depict illness from the patient’s point of view. In the memoirs of her husband, Leonard, we find an account of mental illness from the caregiver’s point of view – the view of someone who is not…
“Scared Work”: Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The White Guard” and the limits of medicine
In 1918, the Russian writer and physician Mikhail Bulgakov set up a medical practice in his native Kyiv (Curtis 5-6). There, in the midst of the Russian revolution and civil war, he would witness the battles for Kyiv by various forces, including the Bolsheviks, the Whites, and the Ukrainian Nationalists. These experiences formed the basis…
Writing through the “Hydra” of Shell Shock
“The magazine is to fulfil a two-fold function. On the one hand it provides a means for the expression of two further activities – the wielding of pen and pencil; while, on the other, it acts as the link between each and every activity.” -The Hydra Hospital Magazine, New Series Vol. 1 (p.2) “Capt….
“When work and thought forbid the heart to feel”: Henry Head and The Price of Wartime Medicine
The British neurologist and poet Henry Head (1861-1940) was positioned right at the fascinating intersection of modernist literature and early twentieth century science, although he is today perhaps of greater significance to the history of science than to literature. As the literary scholar Paul Peppis argues, “human” sciences such as psychology “examine phenomena of distinct…