‘… if I have to explain to someone, like the anthropologist from Mars, what any of these words like compassion or whatever is, sooner or later I have to tell them a story.’ Professor Arthur Frank 

 

Chaired by Professor Brian Hurwitz (King’s College), this Witness Seminar discusses the origins and evolution of ‘narrative medicine’ as an intellectual and educational field. 

 

Featuring the testimonies of contributors from the USA, Canada, UK and Europe, topics include the introduction of humanities into medical education; the influence of medical ethics debates, and the development of bioethics; the impact of political and social movements, for example on disability issues; the emergence of palliative care; patient literature on illness experiences such as cancer, as well as the interdisciplinary underpinnings of narrative practices in medicine derived from philosophical spheres such as hermeneutics, and from the fields of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and the social sciences. 

 

The volume also features an introduction by Professor Trisha Greenhalgh (Oxford). 

 

Jones E M, Tansey E M. (eds) (2015)

Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine, vol. 52. London: Queen Mary University of London.

 

ISBN 978 0 90223 898 5

 

‘I went back to read Freud’s case histories ….  I was part of a cohort of students who were interested in this whole area but we had no term for it. We certainly did not call it ‘narrative something’, on the contrary we thought of it as forms of writing.’ Professor Brian Hurwitz