Medicine In Art

Fully illustrated with hundreds of artworks, this guide explores depictions of illness and healing in Western art.

A renowned diagnostician shares stories of his patients and explores the importance of the human factor in medicine. In The Art of Medicine, Toronto Western Hospital’s internist Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong draws on his vast dossier of personal cases and five decades as a clinician to examine the core principles of a patient-centered approach to diagnosis and treatment. While HPK, as he is fondly known, recognizes and applauds the many invaluable innovations in medical technology, he makes the point that as disease and its management grow increasingly complex, physicians must learn to develop an arsenal of more basic skills, actively using the arts of seeing, hearing, palpation, empathy, and advocacy to provide a more humane and holistic form of care. Aimed at medical practitioners, aspiring doctors, or anyone interested in health and medicine, this book also contains interviews with more than a dozen of HPK’s patients, as well as short essays that explore the thinking of his professional colleagues on the art of medicine.

Lavishly illustrated and beautifully presented 53 colour illustrations of art Marvel at the A4 size pictures in a hardback volume Read the stories behind them Alan and Marcia Emery present a superb collection of over fifty pieces of art, reflecting the physician's role in society and the relationship between doctor and patient. Medicine and Art contains an international selection of artworks, tracing both the history of art and the development of medicine from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, illustrating changing perceptions and applications of medicine, through varied styles and artistic media. Each work of art is accompanied by a short essay describing the history of the artist and the subject of the artwork. The full colour illustrations and detailed Appendix of further artworks depicting specific medical conditions make this book a unique treasure trove of information for all who share the authors' love of art, history and medicine. This intriguing book evolved from a series of articles written and researched by Alan Emery about art and medicine in Clinical Medicine, the journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London. In addition to his life-long love of art, Professor Alan EH Emery has written over twenty books and 300 scientific articles during his long career in medical genetics. Marcia LH Emery shares her husband's love of art and history. She qualified in psychology in the UK and later obtained qualifications in library science at Case Western Reserve University, USA.

In 1901, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens proclaimed in a letter to Will Low, “Health-is the thing!” Though recently diagnosed with intestinal cancer, Saint-Gaudens was revitalized by recreational sports, having realized midcareer “there is something else in life besides the four walls of an ill-ventilated studio.” The Medicine of Art puts such moments center stage in order to consider the role of health and illness in the way art was produced and consumed. Not merely beautiful or entertaining objects, works by Gilded-Age artists such as John Singer Sargent, Abbott Thayer, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens are shown to function as balm for the ill, providing relief from physical suffering and pain. Art did so by blunting the edges of contagious disease through a process of visual translation. In painting, for instance, hacking coughs, bloody sputum, and bodily enervation were recast as signs of spiritual elevation and refinement for the tuberculous, who were shown with a pale, chalky pallor that signalled rarefied beauty rather than an alarming indication of death. Works of art thus redirected the experience of illness in an era prior to the life-saving discoveries that would soon become hallmarks of modern medical science to offer an alternate therapy. The first study to address the place of organic disease-cancer, tuberculosis, syphilis-in the life and work of Gilded-Age artists, this book looks at how well-known works of art were marked by disease and argues that art itself functioned in medicinal terms for artists and viewers in the late 19th century.

Presents over 2,000 years of medical illustrations, including paintings, artifacts, drawings, prints, and extracts from manuscripts and manuals.

Creative Arts in Humane Medicine is a book for medical educators, practitioners, students and those in the allied health professions who wish to learn how the arts can contribute toward a more caring and empathic approach to medicine. Topical research and inspiring real-life accounts from international innovators in the field of humanistic medicine show how the creative arts in varied forms can contribute toward greater learning and understanding in medicine, as well as improved health and quality of life for patients and practitioners.

"Whenever illness is associated with loss of soul," writes Shaun McNiff, "the arts emerge spontaneously as remedies, soul medicine." The medicine of the artist, like that of the shaman, arises from his or her relationship to "familiars"—the themes, methods, and materials that interact with the artist through the creative process. Art as Medicine demonstrates how the imagination heals and renews itself through this natural process. The author describes his pioneering methods of art therapy—including interpretation through performance and storytelling, creative collaboration, and dialoguing with images—and the ways in which they can revitalize both psychotherapy and art itself.

Prepared in conjunction with an exhibition at the Duke University Museum of Art (November 1999 -- January 2000), this book showcases 59 pieces from four medical school collections. The (mostly) full-page reproductions feature objects such as surgical tools and ivory manikins, as well as a wide variety of anatomical illustrations; they range from Europe to the Far East and Africa, and from the 15th to the 20th century. The explanatory text is carefully written and, like the audience it will interest, reaches across the disciplines of art, history, and science. Hansen is an art historian researching art and science in 17th-century Amsterdam; Porter is curator of the Duke University Medical Center Library's History of Medicine Collections; and Martin Kemp (who wrote the foreword), is an art historian (Oxford U.) who has written extensively on the relationships between representation in art and science. The book is distributed by Duke U. Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR