At the Pharmacy
According to the art: In this short story depicting greed and imperiousness in a Russian pharmacy during the late 1800s, Anton Chekhov is foretelling characteristics that will affect health care in the U.S over a century later.
Intoxicated by My Illness
And Other Writings on Life and Death
According to the art: Broyard’s book is a collection of writings concerning illness and death, mostly his, and in particular, the metastatic prostate cancer that took his life at age seventy. He focuses his attention on literature and story, and considers the literature of illness, the literature for illness, and the literature of death. He tells the story of his illness, and the story of his father’s. What results is a range of subjects that at times is memoir and at times meditations.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
According to the art: A central concern of the novel is the role and operation of asylums in Western nations during most of the twentieth-century, with particular attention to how asylums affected the plights of women. The story is a literary representation of the period for asylums that corresponds with social historian Michel Foucault’s analysis in his book, Madness and Civilization.
Madness and Civilization:
A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
According to the art: Michel Foucault digs into the history of madness from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century western Europe and the U.S. This period corresponds roughly from the time when “madmen were allowed to wander in the open countryside,” through a period of exclusionary practices, and until the “birth of the asylum.”
Insomnia:
The Biomedical and The Literary
Projects So That I Can Say More
According to the art: I compare s classic biomedical description of insomnia with excerpts from Samantha Harvey’s book that concerns how severe insomnia affected her.
The Sleepless Unease:
A Year of Not Sleeping
According to the art: The book is a deep and ranging analysis of insomnia causes, consequences, and fixes in the midst of daily life as the author experiences it. She emphasizes the effects insomnia has on her being.
Medical Nihilism
According to the art: Stegenga offers a book-length and formal philosophical explanation using Bayes Theorem on why “we should have little confidence in the effectiveness of medical interventions.”
Vera Drake:
When Motivation is Virtue
According to the art: The director Mike Leigh is asking viewers to consider more than whether abortion is right or wrong prima facie. He is forcing viewers to bring in motive as a qualifying factor to the rightness and wrongness of abortion.
Retinal Hemorrhage:
The Biomedical and The Literary
Projects So That I Can Say More
According to the art: I compare a classic medical text description of a retinal hemorrhage from StatPearls with a literary description from the novel Seeing Red.
Seeing Red
According to the art: The story follows the plight of a young, diabetic woman experiencing a retinal hemorrhage and what comes after clinically and socially. What a retinal hemorrhage is like as it occurs and what the prospect of blindness is like afterward are featured. How both can become a proof of love is intertwined.