Stories about physicians and patients in art and in literature: a narrative approach to The History of Medicine, in Medical Schools

• Autores: Simona Giardina, Antonio G. Spagnolo
• Localización: Medicina y Ética: Revista internacional de bioética, deontología y ética médica, ISSN-e 2594-2166, ISSN 0188-5022, Vol. 29, Nº. 3 (julio-septiembre/July-September), 2018, págs. 743-772
• Idioma: inglés
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Historias de médicos y enfermos en el arte y en la literatura: un acercamiento narrativo a la Historia de la Medicina en las facultades médicas
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Ejemplar
• Resumen

  • During the last thirty years a narrative approach has been marked in The History of Medicine's field, especially in the Anglo sax countries. The main focus is centered on the human being, on interpersonal relations, but on the individual stories, more than on the collective ones. Such perspective uses the privileged contribution of writing (novels, poetry, theater, fables, newspapers, letter collections), and the one evoked by art. In the foreground the life experience of physicians and patients, but also of the relatives, captured through the empathetic process which the works raise on the reader/observer. Therefore sickness is viewed as anexistential condition. The historian Roy Porter defines this perspective as “The story from below”, and thinks that it can be usefulin rebuilding the anthropological aspects of the illness “From thepatient's point of view”. The medicine student who «takes a dive into» the physician and patient stories of the past, acquires the capacity not only to understand the illness, but also to feel the patient's experience (empathy). The stories help to focus on what is missing, or has been lost throughout medical practice, they stimulate personal or individual insight because they impel them to consider not only the practical skills (technical competence), but also to think about themselves and their own emotions. The denotative language does not diminish all the human reality because «medicine is a contemporaneously natural and humanistic science. Clarifying and understanding are necessary in a similarway» (D. Von Engelhardt).