James Belarde// “‘What makes the desert beautiful,’ the little prince said, ‘is that it hides a well somewhere…’” -Antoine de Saint Exupéry “Hi, I’m James! I’m three. My dad’s name is James too! This is my mom, but her name is Zena. This is my baby brother. We’re fifteen apart. We live by –” Thus…
Tag: medical school
“They Are No Respectors of Identity”: Medical Cadaver Dissection, Power, and Inequality in the United States
John A. Carranza // Western biomedical education has relied on the dissection of human bodies to learn of the intricate processes that make us function. Galen and Andreas Vesalius provided the foundation for examining the body in medical education, and the practice has persisted to today despite the increasing use of technology to replace human…
Comedy Conflicted: The Dual Nature of Humor in “The House of God”
James Belarde // “Comedy is a tool of togetherness. It’s a way of putting your arm around someone, pointing at something, and saying, ‘Isn’t it funny that we do that?’ It’s a way of reaching out.” -Kate McKinnon In 1978, Samuel Shem published The House of God, a scandalous novel centered around the lives of…
Roundtable: How Old Should a Doctor Be?
On January 6, 2018, Dr Haider Javed Warraich published an op-ed in the New York Times titled “For Doctors, Age May Be More Than a Number.” In this responsive roundtable, writers Anna Fenton-Hathaway (English literature), Jordan Babando (sociology), and Benjamin Gagnon Chainey (French literature) consider the possibilities and provocations of thinking about how a doctor’s…
Ockham’s Scalpel
Now in my first year of medical school, I am reminded of the last time I learned a new methodology. I was a first-year student at a liberal arts college and decided to enroll in introduction to philosophy. We had read a few seminal works in our required freshman humanities seminar, and I had enjoyed…
