The posts in What These Works Say comprise reviews and analyses of works from the Humanities selected for their focus on illness experiences beyond what biomedical sources typically provide. The works selected address both the experience of illness diseases and disorders cause (e.g., pain, disability, disorientation), and related challenges (e.g., health care access, psychological manifestations, relationship disruptions). The posts consist of three sections: 1) a brief take on the key perspectives the work offers about disease and illness (According to the Arts); 2) a summary of the whole work (Synopsis); and 3) how the work renders, explains, or expands on the illness experiences or disease processes it covers (Analysis).
In her novel set in the Amazonian jungle, Ann Patchett offers complex questions to contemplate for readers interested in the wisdom of enabling fertility in later life, the ethics of human subjects research involving indigenous populations, and the propriety of certain conduct scientists defend using a form of casuistry.
Michael Pollan, a journalist who is known for his work on food, takes on mind-altering drugs, or more specifically, psychedelics. From his research, interviews, and personal experiences, Pollan is enthusiastic about the potential benefits psychedelics offer individuals who are healthy or sick, and societies that are stable or fractious. But, how is this to be done?
Richard Holmes refers to this book as his “account of the second scientific revolution, which swept through Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, and produced a new vision which has rightly been called Romantic science.” The book makes a call for a reuniting of the sciences and the arts, which Medical Humanities attempts to answer.
According to the art: The filmmaker follows the experience his mother has with Alzheimer’s disease over the course of about three years. Included are interviews with his mother, father, and siblings, as well as some of his mother’s longtime friends. The filmmaker splices in family movies spanning three generations reveals how the trajectory of his mother’s life changes as a result of her dementia, and shows personality traits that survived it. A more distant view of the film captures the dementia experience for a devoted, affluent, white, American family.
According to the art: Through fourteen stories, Solnit tells of her experiences with her mother’s dementia, a friend’s cancer, and her own cancer. Some stories about these experiences and other stories are about other events in her life at the same time. She provides thoughts on experiencing particular illnesses, the American health care, and how illness figures in the stories of our lives.
According to the art: This murder mystery features a prime suspect with Alzheimer’s disease and who serves as the narrator for most of the book. The suspect’s disease is advanced enough to make her an unreliable narrator and witness. Because of the author’s personal interest in dementia, the novel offers ideas on how people experience it amid complex circumstances. The author also imagines an end stage of dementia that may be more pleasant than common perceptions.
According to the art: In a 655-word short story, Raymond Chandler captures a range of problems in American health care of the late 1950s. Readers in the 2010s will recognize a similar set of problems.
According to the art: Alice Neel’s painting portrays the illness experience of tuberculous (TB) in 1940, and also conveys social determinants (poverty, malnutrition) that puts populations at risk for illnesses such as TB.
According to the art: Through a series of astonishing case studies from her neurology practice, O’Sullivan shows what psychosomatic illness looks like and describes how it works. She avers that illnesses can arise from pathophysiological causes or psychosomatic mechanisms, and so diagnosticians should be sure to discern which is at work in any given case as much to prevent harm as to effect a cure.
According to the art: This movie was created to render the seizure experience of people with epilepsy.; the storyline is secondary to this aim. It also shows how filmmaking can be effective in capturing the seizure experience in ways that other art forms cannot.