Pasquale S. Toscano // I often reflect that since many days of darkness are destined to everyone, as the wise man warns, mine thus far, by the signal kindness of Providence, between leisure and study, and the voices and visits of friends, are much more mild than those lethal ones. John Milton, “To Leonard Philaras”…
Tag: Literature and medicine
Austen, Expectations, and Crips in the World
Pasquale S. Toscano // I’ve been reading a great deal of Jane Austen lately, which is odd, because I’ve never considered myself a fan of the grande dame of English letters. All of her plots are so damn predictable, and well—how shall we put this—quaint. And then there are those maddeningly handsome gentlemen and far-too-fetching…
Narrative Medicine Spring Basic Virtual Workshop: A Brief Reflection
Amala Poli // On March 19th, I began attending a three-day Basic Narrative Medicine (NM) Workshop. Like much else in academia during the Covid-19 pandemic, the workshop was held virtually via Zoom sessions. Having attended panels and conferences in the last year on Zoom, I wondered about how this would translate the experience of being…
Covering Up
Dr. Brian J. Troth // The Latin crudus has two meanings it bequeaths upon modern English. That which is crude can either be seen as that which is natural or that which is lacking taste. Humans have a natural state, but that state is ephemeral. As soon as the child exits the womb, it is…
“Novum Corpus, Pristina Mens”: Pandemic Forms of Weight Loss, or an Apology in Seven Cantos
Pasquale S. Toscano // Dat sparso capiti vivacis cornus cervi, Dat spatium collo summasque cacuminat aures Cum pedibusque manus, cum longis bracchia mutat Cruribus et velat maculoso vellere corpus; Additus et pavor est. … … ut vero vultus et cornua vidit in unda, ‘me miserum!’ dicturus erat: vox nulla secuta est; Ingemuit: vox illa fuit,…
The Beast Within: Mental Illness in Arto Paasilinna’s The Howling Miller
Avril Tynan // Throughout the nineteenth century, degeneration theory associated certain behaviours and physical and psychological pathologies with a pseudo-Darwinian atavism of primitive traits and characteristics. One need only think of Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, and particularly his 1890 novel La bête humaine (The Beast in Man or The Beast Within), to note the parallels…
“Those Are the Terms”
Anna Fenton-Hathaway When Ursula Le Guin’s 1973 “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” appears on a Science Fiction and Bioethics syllabus, what should medical students think? First, they might reasonably ask, is this even science fiction? bioethics?