Humanities resources to support healthcare professionals and patients
William Carlos Williams. The baby is in a smother of sheets and crumpled blankets. Its left eye closed, its right partly opened. It emits a soft whining cry continuously at every breath. It can’t be more than a few weeks old. Will it live? It is the mother: a great tender-eyed blonde. Great full breasts. Read More …
The demonstration in Seattle 1960-3 that the new technique of dialysis could prolong the lives of patients with end stage renal disease led to a crisis. Both of provision – it was expensive – and ethical. Who should receive this scarce treatment? An age range of 18-45 was considered at first in Seattle, but soon Read More …
The fortunate man here is the doctor. Sassall meets anguished patients on his rounds – the close relatives of the dying, those who are ill and want to die, the immobilized who are made desperate by a kind of claustrophobic fear of their own bodies, the insanely jealous, the lonely who try to kill themselves, Read More …
When breath becomes air. It was my primary care doctor, calling with the chest X-ray result: my lungs, instead of being clear, looked blurry, as if the camera aperture had been left open too long. The doctor said she wasn’t sure what that meant. She likely knew what it meant. I knew. Lucy picked me Read More …
Verbal transcription 6am. The wife: About an hour ago. He woke up and it was as if a knife was sticking in his side. I tried the old reliable, I gave him a good drink of whisky but this time it did no good. I thought it might be his heart so I … Yes. Read More …
Ian Rankin. I don’t really blame people for shunning the dying. I try to do it myself, not physically but mentally by painting other pictures in my head. My mother has perhaps less than a week to live. If what she’s doing now is living. Not living, just there. At least I can go to Read More …
My next shock was a surgical one. On a certain Sunday morning a carriage-and-pair drew up in front of the dining-room window, to my great alarm. In walked a stout old fellow in tile hat and surtout, accompanied by his wife. He said never a word; but his mouth remained wide open. The wife also Read More …
On the other side of the ward, there’s that ‘amazing murmur’ – the mitral stenosis, who lies coughing up pink frothy phlegm into a stained handkerchief. He’s in his mid forties, and his face and body are swollen with oedema. A framed picture of his two little children stands on the bedside table, smiling at Read More …
First, I had mastered the practical basis of my profession, the art and craft of Medicine, which begins and develops only after a man leaves University and Hospital. Secondly, I had endured an extremely severe training and initiation: the very best I could have had. It not only made one exact, punctual, and methodical; but Read More …
The last 1000 days, Molly Case Commentary As we slowly make the shift to practise realistic medicine, where “patients are at the centre of decision making”, it’s more important now to understand what’s truly important to those who are at the receiving end of medical care. The poem The last 1000 days is written in a language Read More …