J. Russell Teagarden

Russell Teagarden came to his interest in applying insights from the humanities to biomedicine after decades in clinical pharmacy practice and research. He realized that biosciences explained how diseases and treatments work, but not how they affect people in their everyday lives. Through formal academic studies and independent research in the humanities, he discovered rich and abundant sources of knowledge and perspectives on how specific health problems and clinical scenarios can be better understood than from the biosciences only. He shares these discoveries through his blog, According to the Arts, and the podcast, The Clinic & The Person.

Of Pain and Profit:
Montaigne’s Kidney Stones
Remastered

What These Works Say

According to the art: The essayist Michel de Montaigne tells of the excruciating pain of his kidney stones but also how be benefitted from them in certain ways; a notion not likely shared by any of those who have experienced them. This post is a remastered version of a post from March, 2024.

This Blog That Podcast

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: Associated with this blog is the podcast, The Clinic & The Person first published in September of 2022 and over the subsequent three years to its end, published 30 episodes. Descriptions of and links to the individual episodes are provided.

Three Views of Death Throes in TB: Biomedical, Literary, Opera

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the arts: Considered together, the perspectives from biomedicine, literary fiction, and opera provider a fuller account of the final stage of TB than any of them individually.

The Room Next Door
Best Friends Forever?

What These Works Say

According to the art: When we have reached a certain age, we can find that we easily pick up where we left off with friends we knew well, for a short time, a long time ago. Almodóvar asks what will we still do for them?

Lights, Camera, Deny
When Managed Care Went to the Movies

What I and Others Say

According to the art: The fatal shooting of a health care insurance executive in December, 2004 brings to mind four movies from the late 1990s and early 2000s. They depicted a building rage about new restrictions to health care coverage and the methods used to apply them, that spring from underlying structures and incentives embedded in US health care.

This is a Test
A Breezy Novel Warns of Damaging Winds

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: Novelists can be quite prescient about particular future events. Their speculative fiction has been known to become reality. Baxter’s novel portrays a scenario closer to transitioning from speculative fiction to nonfiction than either one.

Of Doctors and Health Care
Montaigne’s Harmony

What I and Others Say

When Montaigne considered seeking help for health problems, he considered with trepidation, the impact it would have on his habits, the reliability of medical knowledge, and the way to engage health care services.

Of Rabies, Demons, and Iatrogenesis

What These Works Say

According to the Art: The story centers on a twelve-year old girl set in late 1700s’ Columbia, who was bitten by a presumably rabid dog. Her subsequent course prompts thinking about how more than only medical professionals and institutions should be held accountable for iatrogenesis.

Philoctetes as Prologue

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: The Greek tragedy, Philoctetes, offers prologues to health problems today involving pain, abandonment and exile, and ethical dilemmas.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and
the Reliability of Medical Knowledge

What I and Others Say

According to the art: Thomas Kuhn’s classic book may give us a better understanding of how science works, but probably not one that helps us worry less about the reliability of medical knowledge.

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