Introduction to Medical Humanities: Medicine and the Italian Artistic Heritage

Description

This book proposes an integrated and interdisciplinary approach recording and interpreting the human experience of illness, disability, care, and medical intervention. In our age of deeply technologically-driven medicine, it is crucial to re-establish and promote the neglected relationship between medicine and the arts. This textbook contains contributions by scholars in various fields, who offer their qualified insights in order to reflect on illness, medicine, and the role of physicians and nurses. All chapters overcome a reductive conception of a medicine that is only able to biologically explain illness. All three editors of this book are researchers in Padua, a city that has been described as the cradle of modern medicine. From Gabriele Falloppio to Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente and Giovanni Battista Morgagni, human, normal and pathological, anatomy has taken big steps forward. Galileo Galilei taught for eighteen years at the University of Padua  and developed the scientific method there. During the same period, Padua was also the “nursery of arts”, as Shakespeare wrote. In fact, Padua developed, especially in the XIV, XV, and XVI centuries, an impressive and unique artistic culture thanks to artists such as Giotto, Donatello and Titian. Finally, the city of Saint Anthony is a place where a religious feeling strongly oriented towards charity is deeply rooted and strictly linking its history to that of its hospital. For all these reasons a combination of medical humanities and Italian artistic heritage is of interest to anyone involved in bioethics and medicine. This textbook is a unique resource for students of medicine, nursing, bioethics, psychology, theology, and history of art. Introduction A Course in Medical Humanities in Padua Medical Humanities The Book Contents Chapter 1: The Medical Humanities 1 ``Humanitas´´ and Its Variants: A Family of Meanings ``Humanization´´? No Thanks! Applying Medicine in the Wake of Humanism Medicine as a ``Humanitarian´´ Activity Humanity/Inhumanity: When Medicine Is Result-Oriented Health Practitioners´ ``Humanity´´ 2 The ``Medical Humanities´´ in Practice The Integration of the ``Two Cultures´´ From the Culture of Rights to the ``Empowerment´´ of the Citizen Beyond ``Bellettristic´´: The Arts as Interlocutors References Chapter 2: Clinical Ethics in the Context of Medical Humanities 1 Introduction 2 The Crisis in Medicine and in Bioethics 3 Medical Humanities and the Concept of Acknowledgment 4 Clinical Ethics Consultation: A Possible Common Point 5 What Kind of Specific Training? An Italian Experience 6 Conclusions Bibliography Chapter 3: Perspectives on ``Mediterranean Bioethics´´ 1 Introduction 2 Why a ``Mediterranean Bioethics´´? 3 The Future Perspective on ``Mediterranean Bioethics´´ Bibliography Chapter 4: Medical Liability: Two Historical Cases from Padua 1 Introduction 2 Case I: The Doctor-Patient Relationship between ``Ethics´´ and ``Cunning´´ - Gabriele Zerbi 3 Case II: The Cynical Doctor - Alessandro Knips Macoppe 4 Conclusions References Chapter 5: Medical Issues in Italian Frescoes 1 Introduction How Can We Use Italian Frescoes in Medical Humanities? 2 (Medical) Humanity Through Italian Frescoes 3 Anatomical Knowledge and Italian Frescoes 4 Medical Diagnosis Through Italian Frescoes 5 Disability Through Italian Frescoes 6 Epidemics Through Italian Frescoes Bibliography Chapter 6: The Sculpted Body: Interferences Between Beauty and Anatomy 1 Introduction 2 Body Representations: The Experience of the Sacred 3 Anatomical Knowledge: Dissection and Relics 4 The Drawing 5 Michelangelo´s Legacy 6 Conclusions Bibliography Middle Ages Renaissance Image and Emotion Chapter 7: Clinical Narratives: Stories and Ethics in Healthcare 1 Introduction 2 Narratives and Metaphors of Health and Disease, Illness, and Care 3 Between Medicine Based on Scientific Evidence and Medicine That Listens to Stories: The Return of the Humanities in Clinical... 4 Stories Between Moral Imagination and Narrative Identity 5 Stories of Patients and Carers 6 For a Phenomenology of Illness 7 Care Among Moral Life, Existential Dynamics, and Institutional Realities References Chapter 8: Viral Pandemics and the Advent of Neo-Renaissance: A Lacanian Reading of Dan Brown´s Inferno 1 Introduction 2 Plot Summary 3 Conceptual Framework and Design: The Four Discourses 4 First ``Therapy´´: Awakening the Unworldly Expert (the Mutual Exposure of Past and Present) 5 Second ``Therapy´´: A Craving Prodigy and the Matheme of Desire 6 Third ``Therapy´´: Bertrand Zobrist - Psychopath or Therapist? 7 Fourth ``Therapy´´: The Policy of Denial 8 Resume: Inferno´s Basic Structure in Terms of the Four Discourses 9 The Object a as ``Actor´´ 10 Implications for Virology Bibliography Chapter 9: Psychic Life and Things: Architecture, Urbanism, and Pan-Diadromous 1 Signs and Signals in the Surroundings 2 Landscape and Temple 3 Prosthetic Objects: Contemplation and Construction 4 Psychiatry and Places of ``Madness´´ 5 Architecture and Urban Planning for the Psychic Life 6 Objects, Clothing, Transportation, and Design: Prostheses of Psychic Life with the Emergence of Connectomical Objects 7 Toward Connectomical Landscapes 8 The Connectomical Architecture Bibliography Chapter 10: A Narrative Shift for Clinical Bioethics: The Role of Cinema 1 Crisis 2 Shift 3 Risks Bibliography Chapter 11: The Hunter Gracchus: A Franz Kafka Story of Death´s Dehumanization References Chapter 12: Why Not Dream? Murano: Glass and Spirit 1 Introduction 2 A Bit of History 3 Writing Poetry on Glass 4 Transforming Emotions into a Glasswork 5 Conclusions Bibliography Conclusions Bibliography Index