This open access book studies breath and breathing in literature and culture and provides crucial insights into the history of medicine, health and the emotions, the foundations of beliefs concerning body, spirit and world, the connections between breath and creativity and the phenomenology of breath and breathlessness. Contributions span the classical, medieval, early modern, Romantic, Victorian, modern and contemporary periods, drawing on medical writings, philosophy, theology and the visual arts as well as on literary, historical and cultural studies. The collection illustrates the complex significance and symbolic power of breath and breathlessness across time: breath is written deeply into ideas of nature, spirituality, emotion, creativity and being, and is inextricable from notions of consciousness, spirit, inspiration, voice, feeling, freedom and movement. The volume also demonstrates the long-standing connections between breath and place, politics and aesthetics, illuminating both contrasts and continuities.

An interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring the complex and conflicted topic of beauty in cultural, arts and medicine, looking back through the long cultural history of beauty, and asking whether it is possible to 'recover beauty'.

This collection of essays explores the relation between literature and madness from the Medieval through to the Modern period. The essays examine how literature represents the experience of madness and cultural responses to it, and how madness may inspire creativity. The volume also illuminates the history of medicine, demonstrating the shifts and continuities in clinical understandings of and social attitudes to mental illness from the Middle Ages through to the 'enlightened' notions of the Eighteenth Century to the development of psychoanalysis. The volume includes original contributions from well-known writers and specialists, such as the late Sir Roy Porter, Al Alvarez, Pat Barker, Michael O'Donnell and A. S Byatt.

The phrase 'medical humanities' has a currency that is wider than any agreement as to what it means, though those engaged in the field usually know what they are attempting. This volume examines the idea of 'symptom' as a route to understanding the structure of clinical practice. Actual symptoms are always experienced by real, actual individuals - however much those experiences are mediated by language, culture, expectation and the conventions of the clinical consultation. And this in turn is important because it reminds us that health, illness, well-being, suffering are first and foremost aspects of experience. This book asks questions - and offers answers - about the meaning of actual symptoms and of the concept of 'symptom' as a prelude to a cumulative interdisciplinary understanding of illness as a source of human need, and clinical medicine as a human response to it.

Critiquing many areas of medical practice and research whilst making constructive suggestions about medical education, this book extends the scope of medical ethics beyond sole concern with regulation.

Illustrating some humanistic ways of understanding patients, this volume explores the connections between medical ethics, healthcare and subjects, such as philosophy, literature, creative writing and medical history and how they can affect the attitudes of doctors towards patients and the perceptions of medicine, health and disease which have become part of contemporary culture.

The authors examine a range of ideas in medical practice and research, including:

• the idea that patient status or the doctor/patient relationship can be understood via quantitative scales
• the illusion fostered by medical ethics that doctors, unlike those in other professions, are uniquely beneficent and indeed altruistic.

An excellent text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of law, medical ethics and medical healthcare law, Bioethics and the Humanities shows the real ethical achievements, problems and half-truths of contemporary medicine.

Critiquing many areas of medical practice and research whilst making constructive suggestions about medical education, this book extends the scope of medical ethics beyond sole concern with regulation.

Illustrating some humanistic ways of understanding patients, this volume explores the connections between medical ethics, healthcare and subjects, such as philosophy, literature, creative writing and medical history and how they can affect the attitudes of doctors towards patients and the perceptions of medicine, health and disease which have become part of contemporary culture.

The authors examine a range of ideas in medical practice and research, including:

• the idea that patient status or the doctor/patient relationship can be understood via quantitative scales
• the illusion fostered by medical ethics that doctors, unlike those in other professions, are uniquely beneficent and indeed altruistic.

An excellent text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of law, medical ethics and medical healthcare law, Bioethics and the Humanities shows the real ethical achievements, problems and half-truths of contemporary medicine.

This is the first volume to comprehensively introduce the ways in which interdisciplinary thinking across the humanities and social sciences might contribute to, critique and develop medical understanding of the human individually and collectively.

This open access book studies breath and breathing in literature and culture and provides crucial insights into the history of medicine, health and the emotions, the foundations of beliefs concerning body, spirit and world, the connections between breath and creativity and the phenomenology of breath and breathlessness. Contributions span the classical, medieval, early modern, Romantic, Victorian, modern and contemporary periods, drawing on medical writings, philosophy, theology and the visual arts as well as on literary, historical and cultural studies. The collection illustrates the complex significance and symbolic power of breath and breathlessness across time: breath is written deeply into ideas of nature, spirituality, emotion, creativity and being, and is inextricable from notions of consciousness, spirit, inspiration, voice, feeling, freedom and movement. The volume also demonstrates the long-standing connections between breath and place, politics and aesthetics, illuminating both contrasts and continuities.

This collection of essays explores the relation between literature and madness from the Medieval through to the Modern period. The essays examine how literature represents the experience of madness and cultural responses to it, and how madness may inspire creativity. The volume also illuminates the history of medicine, demonstrating the shifts and continuities in clinical understandings of and social attitudes to mental illness from the Middle Ages through to the 'enlightened' notions of the Eighteenth Century to the development of psychoanalysis. The volume includes original contributions from well-known writers and specialists, such as the late Sir Roy Porter, Al Alvarez, Pat Barker, Michael O'Donnell and A. S Byatt.

In this landmark Companion, expert contributors from around the world map out the field of the critical medical humanities. This is the first volume to introduce comprehensively the ways in which interdisciplinary thinking across the humanities and social sciences might contribute to, critique and develop medical understanding of the human individually and collectively. The thirty-six newly commissioned chapters range widely within and across disciplinary fields, always alert to the intersections between medicine, as broadly defined, and critical thinking. Each chapter offers suggestions for further reading on the issues raised, and each section concludes with an Afterword, written by a leading critic, outlining future possibilities for cutting-edge work in this area. Topics covered in this volume include: the affective body, biomedicine, blindness, breath, disability, early modern medical practice, fatness, the genome, language, madness, narrative, race, systems biology, performance, the postcolonial, public health, touch, twins, voice and wonder. Together the chapters generate a body of new knowledge and make a decisive intervention into how health, medicine and clinical care might address questions of individual, subjective and embodied experience.

There is a widespread view that modern medicine is primarily a scientific enterprise and that the decisions of clinicians follow from evidence-based science. In terms of this view the need for clinical judgement is minimal. The aims of this book are to make a case for the centrality and irreplaceability of clinical judgement, to identify the elements of good clinical judgement, and to suggest how these might be developed by using the humanities in medical undergraduate and postgraduate education. The authors argue that good clinical judgement requires both technical evidence and a humane attitude. But technical evidence is not always quantifiable or even scientific; it can be like that of the detective or the literary scholar. A humane attitude involves ethical sensitivity, but also a broad educated perspective which can be derived from the arts. The authors illustrate their argument by examining decisions made by doctors in clinical situations, in public health, and (in a chapter contributed by a hospital consultant) in resource management. About the authors: Robert S. Downie is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University since 1969. He is a member of the BMA Ethics Committee and co-editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics. He has published extensively in the field of medical ethics. Jane MacNaughton has recently taken the position of Director of Centre for Arts, Humanities, Health and Medicine at the University of Durham. Previously she was Clinical Lecturer in General Practice at Glasgow University and a part-time GP.

This fourth volume in the Companion to Medical Humanities series contemplates the challenge of the prognosis, of looking ahead, wondering what will happen, and attempting to make sense of life and death. Beautifully written, it encourages a positive view of life's unpredictability in all its richness, and considers, through personal and professional perspectives, the role of the medical profession in guiding patient experience. It offers inspirational reading for all academics and professionals with an interest in the medical humanities, as well as researchers in philosophy of medicine and medical ethics