The Clinic & The Person

Send us Fan MailFor thousands of years, the value of medical treatments of the day was disparaged with some frequency mostly in the form of quips from prominent people in health care, the arts, government, and social commentary. More recently, the quips evolved into formal philosophical arguments conveying a view that the likelihood of any new medical treatment becoming a major breakthrough is low. The term “medical nihilism” is now associated with this view. In this episode, with the physician and philosopher Dr. Ross Upshur, we cover medical nihilism conceptually and assess how well the term fits the arguments underlying it. We discuss some of the components comprising the arguments, which are generally real, and how they can contribute to medical nihilism, and validate the uncertainty existing in medicine for some. We talk further about how to accept this uncertainty and manage our health care decisions as providers, educators, and consumers without falling into the despair of medical nihilism. Note that throughout the episode, we mention Jacob Stegenga and his book, Medical Nihilism, and also Jonathan Fuller and his book, The New Modern Medicine. We mention Ross Upshur and Maya Goldenberg’s article, Countering Medical Nihilism by Reconnecting Facts and Values in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Citations for each are listed below.Primary SourcesUpshur, Ross, and Maya J. Goldenberg. "Countering Medical Nihilism by Reconnecting Facts and Values." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, vol. 84, Dec. 2020, pp. 75–83. (Available as pdf at Maya Goldenberg’s website.) Stegenga, Jacob. Medical Nihilism. Oxford University Press, 2020.Fuller, Jonathan. The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2025, academic.oup.com/book/61541. (Available as open access at Oxford University Press.)LinksBiosketch for our guest Dr. Ross Upshur FDA list of recalls, market withdrawals, and safety alerts.AttributionsFor audio clip: From Atonement by Ian McEwan, read by Jill Tanner. Audiobook. [Recorded Books, 2002]. Accessed via Spotify.Episode image: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr Credit: Oliver Wendell Holmes. Colour lithograph by Sir L. Ward [Spy], 1886. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection. License: Public Domain Mark.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to fan mail link above, or email to: [email protected] to Dr. Ross Upshur for his interesting and insightful contributions to this episode. Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan MailThe diagnosis and clinical management of various mental disorders are aided by knowing the predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors in a given case. Both the themed album and the full-length movie of Pink Floyd’s, The Wall, depict these factors in the course of the main character’s—"Pink’s”— mental health deterioration through music and film. In this episode, we draw from selected songs on the album and from selected scenes in the movie connecting the three factors with particular behaviors Pink manifests. In the process, we show how they are used in medical education and training in real time.Joining us is Dr. Anthony Tobia, who is the campus chair in the Department of Psychiatry at the Rutgers School of Medicine and is also the Service Chief of Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health in New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Tobia is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and is certified in internal medicine and psychosomatic medicine. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Rutgers. Dr. Tobia is the Director of Graduate and Interprofessional Education at Rutgers University Behavioral Health and has received the Outstanding Clinical Faculty Member Excellence Award in 2018 and 2019. He is an active contributor to the medical literature with publications, reviews, and abstracts. Dr. Tobia’s educational interests include the merging of popular culture and the field of behavioral medicine, which is evident from this episode and from his previous appearance on the podcast episode featuring The Who’s Tommy. Along with Dr. Tobia for this episode is Kevin Frederiks, who at the time of recording, was a fourth-year medical student at Rutgers.CitationsFor the recorded album: Pink Floyd. The Wall. Columbia Records, 1979.For the movie: Parker, Alan, director. Pink Floyd The Wall. MGM, 1982.LinkThe movie, The Wall, is available on YouTube here. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] to Dr. Anthony Tobia and (by now) Dr. Kevin Fredriks for their interesting and insightful contributions to this episode. Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan MailThe Clinic & Person podcast returns, and this short episode recounts the reasons for its return and what can be expected. The general objectives of the podcast remain the same in that we will still draw from certain works such as literature, art, film, music, etc., but source content will also come from certain ideas or disciplines such as philosophy, ethics, sociology, economics, history, and the like. We talk briefly about episodes we have in the works, which derive from these and various other content sourcesYou can see the list of our previous 30 episodes here. You can also listen to them from there or from many established podcast providers. They can also be accessed at medhum.org, where there is also a curated forum of reviews, interviews, and opinion pieces on the types of subject this podcast considers in addition to many more.Get in touchWe would love to hear from you with any suggestions, comments, or questions. You can use the “Send us Fan Mail” link above, or to [email protected] hope you will join us again for new episodes, follow us where you get your podcasts, and tell all your friends and colleagues about us. Our next episode will be posted soon. Episode image: One Open Window, Chris Downer (source: Wikicommons)

Send us Fan MailWe end the podcast after thirty episodes over three years. In this brief, last episode, we announce the end of this series, explain our reasons for ending it now, summarize what we covered over the thirty episodes, and express our appreciation for our listeners and the guests who came on the podcast. We also reveal what is next for us, which will involve similar interests but we will expand our sources beyond humanities in a narrow sense to encompass broader ideas relevant to health and biomedicine, such as philosophy, ethics, sociology, history, and religion, among others. While we will continue to produce audio programming, we will also produce written works such as essays, reviews, critiques, and reflections. Most of this work will be available through MedHum.org.MedHum.org is an independent, online, multidisciplinary, and multimedia collaborative for identifying and generating critical thinking in health, culture, and the arts. It began in early 2024 following the discontinuation of the NYU Literature, Art and Medicine Database (LitMed), which had been a respected and consulted source around the world for perspectives on health and biomedicine drawn from the humanities. MedHum.org builds on the LitMed model and expands on the content sources and media used for its work. Look for us there, and subscribe to the MedHum.org newsletter for announcements of new contributions.LinksThe Clinic & The Person episodesRussell Teagarden’s blog post with summary of each podcast episodeMedHum.org siteMedHum.org newsletterPlease send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to [email protected] to all the listeners and to all our guests. Image credit: Oscar Maugsch (1857–?) (architect); Beautiful Buildings Pics (photo), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Send us Fan MailNote: The story and the images in the book we cover in this episode could bring back memories of unhappy and traumatic events for some people who have experienced cancer in some way. This episode centers on the fictional story of a forty-three-year-old woman’s course with recurrent, metastatic breast cancer. She has a coming-of-age-daughter and a treasured husband. The story is a common one in literature and in real life, but the way it’s told in Maddie Mortimer’s novel, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, is not common in that a lot of the narration—variously in first-, second-, and third-person forms—comes from the cancer itself, as that can be inferred. Nor is it common in Mortimer’s use of a variety of written and graphic forms. While these and many other aspects of the novel are worthy of attention, our interest was limited to what the cancer narration offers to the story and the understanding of cancer from the pathological to the personal. Mortimer’s writing style and the literary forms she used made it possible for us to differentiate scenes and scenarios we described as clever, affecting, compelling, gorgeous, or beautiful from events and realizations we described as awful, obscene, terrible, scary, or hard. We worked to reconcile these antipodes as necessary for the complete and poignant portrayal of the course this cancer took and the effects it had on the characters. The distinction also assisted us in considering whether or not all or just parts of the book could be interesting and useful to various constituencies (e.g., patients, family, students, support groups, etc). While doing so, we often expressed astonishment that Mortimer, who was in her mid-twenties when she wrote the novel, and has no formal training in medicine, could possess such sophisticated and technical insights into the molecular biology, pathology, and pharmacology of cancer, and in the emotional torments and practical realities accompanying it.We were joined by Dr. Laurel Lyckholm from West Virginia University Cancer Institute, who started her medical career as a registered nurse and later became a physician board certified in medicine, medical oncology, hematology, and hospice and palliative medicine. She has formal training and experience in medical ethics and medical humanities, and has a particular interest in support programming for adolescents and young adults with cancer and their families. Her work and dedication have won her many awards for teaching, leadership, and patient care. We were fortunate to have her with us and we thank her profusely for her valuable time and thoughtful perspectives. LinksPublisher (Simon & Shuster) website for Maps of Our Spectacular BodiesVideo interview with Maddie Mortimer in which she describes how she created the novel.Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on doxorubicin infusion effects as the cancer describes them.Audio sourceAudio clips were from Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies audiobook available on Spotify.Episode Image CreditGreco, L.; Rubbino, F.; Morelli, A.; Gaiani, F.; Grizzi, F.; de’Angelis, G.L.; Malesci, A.; Laghi, L.; CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsPlease send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] for listening, and please follow The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan MailMichael Pollan, a journalist long known for his work in food and nutrition, and as the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, shifted his attention to psychedelics when they were beginning to win favor again after having been shunned—legally and culturally—for three decades. Pollan’s interest took the form of “immersive journalism,” meaning he tried some of the psychedelics himself, and directed his investigation into “the potential for these molecules as a tool for both understanding the mind and, potentially, changing it.” The result was his 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind, and a companion documentary film. Taking our lead from his book, we focus on: consciousness, spirituality, and mysticism as what is at work in the effects psychedelics produce, and how they may delineate limits to biomedicine (rational or not), that is, how they brighten or blur the line between classic biomedicine and whatever isn’t. LinksMichael Pollan's websiteTrailer for Netflix documentary film based on How to Change Your MindThe UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics cofounded by Michael PollanRussell Teagarden’s blog pieces on his book, How to Change Your Mind, and on his book, This is Your Mind on PlantsVideo of Timothy Leary at Golden Gate Park Human Be – In (Jan 14, 1967)Our next episode will feature Maddie Mortimer’s novel, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies. We are interested in this common, but tragic story of a mother and wife with terminal cancer and a daughter coming of age, told in an uncommon way with cancer cells serving as narrators at times and the use of graphics, poetry, and other forms of storytelling. Joining us will be Dr. Laurel Lykholm, who is a medical oncologist and who also works in medical ethics and medical humanities. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] for listening, and please follow The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Episode image: Psychodelic Spiral: marcello from potenza, italy, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Send us Fan MailSusan Sontag has said, “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.” Author Lina Meruane challenges the idea that people with illnesses are necessarily separated into a different kingdom than those who are not sick, asserting instead that illness can be part of anyone’s normality. She makes this case through her novel, Nervous System. The novel tells the stories of four family members and a boyfriend who, at one time or another, develop a serious illness or help take care of one of the others with a serious illness: it’s all illness, it’s all the time, it’s normal. We talk with Dr. Meruane about her idea of illness as normality as she presented it in the novel, and about how its atypical structure and its evocative and memorable prose contribute to the stories told and the ideas offered.SourceNervous System by Lina Meruane, translated by Meghan McDowell, Graywolf Press, 2021.LinksLina Meruane’s bioRussell Teagarden’s blog piece about the novel, Nervous System, and his blog piece about the MRI scene in the novel.Russell Teagarden’s blog piece about Lina Meruane’s novel, Seeing Red.Video conversation between Lina Meruane and Meghan McDowell about Nervous System.Interview with Lina Meruane in LALT magazine about Nervous System.A big thanks to Lina Meruane for sharing her thoughts on illness as normality and her writing processes.Our next episode will draw from the journalist Michael Pollan’s books investigating the prospects for psychedelics in the management of various mental health problems, or even to make individuals and communities better than well. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan MailFour movies released between 1997 and 2002 picked up on the anger and resentment building among people encountering increasingly aggressive managed health care tactics aimed at reducing costs during that time. The four movies are: As Good As It Gets; The Rainmaker; Critical Care; and John Q. We talk about how they caught and depicted the rage as it was just reaching the surface of broad societal notice and concern. We note how the rage persists despite efforts on many levels to address it over the years, and wonder if it has reached its apogee with the gunning down of a health care insurance executive.LinksTrailers for featured movies:As Good As It GetsThe RainmakerCritical CareJohn QOther movies mentioned:Damaged Care (no trailer available)SickoRussell Teagarden’s blog posting on the featured movies, with more about what is behind the managed care practices generating anger and frustration. Russell Teagarden’s published article on proper uses and improper uses of prior authorization. If not available and of interest, contact him at [email protected] podcast episodes mentioned:Consumptive Heroines: Opera and TB with Drs Linda and Michael Hutcheon (Episode 26)Life Imitates Art: Covid-19 Edition (Episode 16)Additional BackgroundDaniels N, Sabin JE. Setting Limits Fairly: Learning to Share Resources for Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.Wynia MK, Schwab AP. Ensuring Fairness in Health Care Coverage: An Employer’s Guide to Making Good Decisions on Tough Issues. New York: AMACOM, 2007.Pearson SD, Sabin JE, Emanuel EJ. No Margin, No Mission. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Daniels N, Teagarden JR, Sabin JE. An ethical template for pharmacy benefits. Health Affairs 2003;22:125-137.Our next episode will focus on illness as normality as we can grasp it from the inventive novel, Nervous System, and with the help of its author, Lina Meruane. Our discussion could lead to the question: Why can’t biomedical writing be more interesting? Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Episode image: Film Set (ProScreenMedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Send us Fan MailThe trajectories of tuberculosis (TB) and opera met in the mid-nineteenth century most notably with the production of La Traviata in 1853, and then La Bohème near the century’s end. With eminent scholars Linda and Michael Hutcheon, we talk about how these trajectories converged and how these resulting two operas then brought attention to the medical effects of the infection and the sociocultural influences on its spread. We also discuss how the discovery of germ therapy during the time between the staging of these operas affected the way social behaviors changed accordingly, that is, from understanding TB as hereditary to understanding it as infectious. We play audio clips from parts of the operas pertinent to perspectives provided. LinksThe combined bio for Linda and Michael Hutcheon.The New York Metropolitan Opera on-demand video service where you can get access to high-quality video productions of La Traviata and La Bohème among many other operas and performances. (There could be a 7-day free trial available).Homer Simpson performing as Rudolpho in La Bohème singing Oh Dio! Mimi!We covered the effects of TB as an aesthetic ideal of beauty during the nineteenth century as represented in paintings earlier in episode 5.Audio CreditsLa TraviataPreludio (National Philharmonic Orchestra; Richard Bonynge cond London Records 1979)Prendi, Quest’È L’Immagine (Orchestra of the Opera House, Rome; Tullio Serafin cond; Victoria de los Angeles (Violetta); EMI Records Ltd 1960; digitally remastered 1992)La BohèmeO Soave Fanciulla (Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan cond; Mirella Freni (Mimi); Luciano Pavarotti (Rudolfo); Rolando Panerai (Marcello); London Records 1972)Si. Mi Chiamono Mimi (ibid)Mimi È Una Civetta (ibid)Mimi È Tanto Malata! (ibid)A big thanks to Drs Linda and Michael Hutcheon who in addition to providing their expertise and perspectives during the podcast, also contributed ideas for the production. Our next episode will feature four movies that picked up early—latter half of 1990s—on the building rage to managed care policies and practices in the US that recently took the form of deadly gun violence.   Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan MailThe renowned English social realist and portrait painter, Luke Fildes (rhymes with “childs”), created The Doctor in 1891 after Henry Tate commissioned a painting from him for his new museum, the Tate Britain. The subject of the painting was Fildes’ choice. Despite a poor reception among art critics when it was first exhibited, the painting quickly became iconic as the physician ideal. Over its 133-year history, the painting has been used for a variety of purposes, including inspiration, education, propaganda, and politics. During that time, the ways in which the painting represents the physician ideal changed. We talk about these aspects of the painting with Hannah Darvin from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She has conducted extensive research into the painting and its creator. LinksAbout Hannah Darvin at Queen’s University.Hannah Darvin’s description of her research for the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.John Brewer Eberly’s diptych rendering a modern version of The Doctor in which computer technology is interjected between doctor and patient. The next episode will feature opera and how as an art form it can render illnesses in ways that elaborate on bioscience texts and teachings. For examples, we will draw from two operas featuring female characters with tuberculosis (“consumptive heroines”), namely, La Traviata and La Bohème. Joining us will be Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon, who have combined their expertise in comparative literature and medicine, respectively, with their love for opera into an expansive body of scholarly work making both opera and medicine more interesting and better appreciated.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Episode image: The Doctor ,  Luke Fildes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Send us Fan MailThe scope and intensity of health care products and services available today make it necessary for us to have thoughts about how much of our way of life we would be willing to give up for them. Finding the balance that works for people is a daunting task. They feel the gravitational pull of health care providers and related industries, and they face the pressures family, friends, and cultural attitudes and expectations can put on them to use all the health care services available. We consider this subject as three essayists thought about it. The essayists are Barbara Ehrenreich, Ezekiel Emanuel, and Michel de Montaigne. We identify some of these forces and discuss how the essayists reacted to them in their writings.Primary Sources:Ehrenreich, Barbara. Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer; Twelve, 2018. Emanuel, Ezekiel J. "Why I Hope to Die at 75." The Atlantic, Oct. 2014.de Montaigne, Michel. The Complete Works. Translated by Donald M. Frame, introduction by Stuart Hampshire. Everyman's Library; Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.Links:Website for the Hartford HealthCare Elevate Health “series of 1-minute informational segments about health topics” heard on Connecticut Public Radio. The recently-published novel from which the last audio clip was taken is Blood Test, written by Charles Baxter and published in 2024 by Pantheon Books. Russell Teagarden's blog piece on novel. Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer.Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Montaigne’s essays covering his thoughts on doctors and health care services.  Ezekiel Emanuel’s website.Ezekiel Emanuel’s 2014 article in The Atlantic (behind paywall).Ezekiel Emanuel’s appearance on news show where he updates his position on how he manages his health care. PDF of Montaigne’s collected essays (Project Gutenberg)Episode image: Portrait of Michel de Montaigne; Antoine Maurin, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsThe next episode will feature Luke Fildes’ painting, The Doctor (1891) with Hannah Darvin from Queen’s University in Toronto, Canada. Here is the link to the painting from the Tate Britain Museum in London, England. We will focus on how the painting has been viewed as a work of art and how it has served as an ideal of medicine when it was created and since. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected]. Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan MailWhen the British band, The Who, released their double album, Tommy, in 1969, many of the songs in it became instant classics and served as anthems for the Baby Boomer generation ever since. The album was characterized as a “rock opera,” because when connected, the songs told the story of the “deaf, dumb, and blind kid,” Tommy. The storyline made possible subsequent musicals, first as a movie in 1975, and then as a Broadway play in 1993 and as a revival in 2024. Underlying the storyline in each of these genres are the psychiatric consequences of childhood trauma Tommy experiences. In this episode, we consider the psychiatric conditions Tommy exhibits through selected songs from the original Broadway production, and how they are used in education and training. Joining us for this purpose is Dr. Anthony Tobia, who is the regional chair in the Department of Psychiatry at the Rutgers School of Medicine and is also the Service Chief of Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health in New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Tobia also holds a secondary appointment in the Division of General Internal Medicine there. His interests and scholarly work include the value and application of merging popular culture and psychiatry. The Who’s Tommy is among the many cultural works he has found helpful in depicting psychiatric problems for purposes of teaching health professions students and practitioners, and others in roles helping people with mental illness.Links:Original Broadway cast album of The Who’s Tommy, 1993Background on The Who’s Tommy movie, 1975.The video of Dr. Tobia’s psychiatry grand rounds on the Phantom of the Opera mentioned in the podcast. Reddit 31 Knights of Halloween didactic at Rutgers during October. Thanks to Benedict Teagarden, podcast music and culture director, for pointers  on how the harmonization in See Me, Feel Me contributes to the meaning of the lyrics.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected]. Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan MailGreek tragedies often concern identifiable and universal problems humans have confronted over the millennia. Among these problems are those illness and suffering create. In this episode we draw from Sophocles’ play, Philoctetes, and in particular, how it depicts illness as exile. With our guest, Professor Paul Ranelli, we first cover the characteristics of Greek tragedies that are applicable to illness and suffering (i.e., enduring relevance, catharsis, empathy). We then cover the play, Philoctetes, what it tells about illness as exile, and how it connects to more recent writings on the concept (e.g., Virginia Woolf and Susan Sontag). Lastly, Paul Ranelli talks about an initiative he was involved in with the University of Minnesota Department of Theater Arts and Dance, the Center for the Art of Medicine, the College of Pharmacy Center for Orphan Drug Research, and the playwright Kevin Kling. This collaboration developed and staged an adaptation of Philocteteshighlighting challenges rare diseases pose. Paul describes how it was conceived, developed, produced, and performed. He also talks about how patients, families, students, health care professionals, and others received it. Spoiler alert: they loved it and saw great value in the endeavor. Primary sourceSophocles. Philoctetes; In The Complete Greek Tragedies, Sophocles II, translated by David Grene; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957.Secondary sourcesVirginia Woolf. On Being Ill; Ashfield, Ma: Paris Press, 2002. Susan Sontag. Illness as Metaphor; New York: Doubleday, 1990. Drew Leder. Illness as Exile: Sophocles’ Philoctetes; Literature and Medicine. 1990(1):1-11. Vassiliki Kampourelli. Historical empathy and medicine: Pathography and empathy in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. 2022:25:561–575.Cynda H Rushton, Bryan Doerries, Jeremy Greene, Gail Geller. Dramatic interventions in the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet. 2020 (Vol 396):305-306. LinksRussell Teagarden’s blog piece on Philoctetes as prologue to current day issues involving illness as exile, pain, ethics, and moral injury. Video of Theater of War Productions dramatic reading of Philoctetes performed January 9, 2923.Video of the play RARE, the University of Minnesota adaptation of Philoctetes.Video of documentary on development of the play.Thanks to Dr. Paul Ranelli for his contributing is knowledge, expertise, and wit to this episode. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Episode image: Philoctetes (Jean Germain Drouais, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Send us Fan Mail“Should we worry about the reliability of medical knowledge?” asks philosopher John Huss (University of Akron). We consider this question from the perspective of Thomas Kuhn’s classic, 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn explains how science does not evolve incrementally, one step following another, but rather undergoes wholesale revolutions disconnected from all that came before. He called these revolutions, “paradigm shifts” (to his everlasting regret). While Kuhn draws mostly from astronomy to make his case, we draw from recent and past medical examples to show how his concept applies to medicine as well. We talk about how various groups dependent on reliable medical knowledge (e.g., patients, health care professionals, educators) can be affected by the possibility of major shifts in established approaches to health care at any time. There’s no escape from reality, as the song goes. Primary Source CitationKuhn T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; 1996.LinksRussell Teagarden’s related blog posts on According to the Arts:Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific RevolutionMichel Foucault’s book, The Birth of the ClinicDr. Barry Marshall’s story of how he and Dr. Robin Warren engineered the change in peptic ulcer disease from acid based to infection based.The Clinic & The Person Episode 12 (September, 2023), featuring the paradigm shift from lobotomies and other forms of psychosurgery to psychopharmacology. Sir Brian May’s bio (guitarist for Queen and PhD astrophysicist).Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected]. Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailPeople can have certain desires stemming from their illnesses, for the arts, health, companionship, serenity, and meaning among other possibilities. The scholar, writer, and teacher David B. Morris considers these desires a form of eros that should be taken into account as a part of what people go through with their illnesses and what could potentially help them. We speak with David Morris about the relationship between eros and illness, and evaluate it using examples from art, literature, and theater. We muse about possible applications.Primary Source CitationMorris D. Eros and Illness. Cambridge MA; Harvard University Press, 2017LinksRussell Teagarden’s relevant blog pieces: David Morris’ book, Eros and IllnessAnatole Broyard’s book, Intoxicated by My IllnessThe play, Farinelli and the KingMontaigne’s essays about his kidney stonesModigliani’s reclining nude series:Reclining Nude, 1917Reclining Nude (Nu Couché) 1917–1918Reclining Nude (Le Grand Nu) 1919Nude on a Blue Cushion 1917David Morris’ CVThanks to David Morris for coming on this episode and providing his thinking on the role of eros in illness.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailAndrew Leland is a major figure as a writer, editor, producer, teacher, and podcaster across the mainstream American cultural landscape. He has contributed to the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Believer, McSweeney’s, Radiolab, The Organist, and 99% Invisible among other respected sources, and has taught at prestigious universities. Amidst it all, he has been progressing towards blindness as a result of retinitis pigmentosa. As his sight diminished to the extent he needed assistance, Leland became motivated to investigate what the world would be for him when his sight was all but gone. In his book, The Country of the Blind, he reports his findings and conclusions. He shares this title with the H.G. Wells story he uses as a touchstone and through line. Cohosts Russell Teagarden and Dan Albrant talk about what can be drawn from Leland’s experiences and from the writers and artists he calls mentors, and how he expects his world will be the same when he is blind as it was before. Citation:Andrew Leland, The Country of the Blind, New York, Penguin Press, 2023. (The paperback edition will be available on July 23, 2024).Links:Andrew Leland’s website.Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on Andrew Leland’s book, The Country of the Blind.A pdf of H.G. Wells’ story, The Country of the Blind.Trailer for the Apple TV+ series, See.Video clip from Seinfeld featuring Kramer acting as patient for medical students.Video clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail about burning the witch.Thanks to Andrew Leland for permission to use a clip from the audio edition of his book, The Country of the Blind.Episode image:  The Country of the Blind (opening illustration);  Frank R. Paul, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsPlease send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailFour years after the Covid pandemic began, as daily life has returned in large measure to its pre-pandemic shape, assessments and reflections about how the pandemic was able to wreak such havoc and how it could be prevented from occurring again are coming forth. Many are technocratic in nature and assume our aims and pursuits will remain the same as before. Micheal O’Siadhail (pronounced mee-hawl o’sheel), in his new book of poems, Desire, says that in addition to technocratic responses to the pandemic (and other threats to civilization covered in the book), we should give serious thought to what we desire. We talk to O’Siadhail about this idea and he reads selected poems from the book that characterize many aspects of what the pandemic put people through collectively and individually. He also talks about how the forms of his poetry convey his thoughts just as his words do, and how poetry, through syntax, sound, meter, and intensity, can add clarity and effectiveness to prosaic prose communicating complex concepts. Citation: Micheal O’Siadhail. Desire. Waco, Tx; Baylor University Press, 2023.Links:Micheal O’Siadhail’s website.Russell Teagarden’s relevant blog pieces in According to the Arts: DesireOne Crimson ThreadPrevious podcast episode with Micheal O’Siadhail featuring his poems recounting his late wife’s final years with Parkinson’s disease.Thanks to Micheal O’Siadhail for bringing his enlightened perspectives on what we experienced with Covid through the piercing poetry in his book, Desire.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts,.  Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWe return to the subject of how terrible the HIV/AIDS crisis was at its peak. The first time (Episode 9) we drew from a memoir, documentary film, and a literary novel. This time we feature the graphic memoir, Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 with the author MK Czerwiec. She created a memoir of her time as a nurse in an HIV/AIDS using the comic medium. Since then, Czerwiec has become a leading figure in Graphic Medicine. We talk to her about the Graphic Medicine field and its many applications, and about the many illustrative and poignant insights her book offers about the AIDS crisis in ways biomedical texts and few of the other arts can do nearly as well. Links:Website for Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 372MK Czerwiec’s websiteGraphic Medicine organization websiteRussell Teagarden’s blog piece on Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 372 in According to the ArtsThanks to MK Czerwiec for opening our world to graphic medicine and expanding our understanding of the AIDS crisis through your graphic memoir.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailHuman behaviors in many segments of society during the Covid-19 pandemic could have been predicted based on literary texts from the past and right up to the moment the pandemic began. In this episode, we compare excerpts from selected literary texts imagining or depicting human reactions to plagues ranging from as far back as 700 years to just one month after the pandemic began with statements made or actions taken during the pandemic. The similarities are uncanny. Russell is inclined to think this means we’re doomed; Dan is not so inclined.Links:Links to Russell Teagarden’s blog pieces in According to the Arts on the sources discussed in episode:The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio, New York, Penguin Classics, 1972 (written in 1351-1353) The Pandemic’s Impact on NYC Migration Patterns, New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, Bureau of Budget, November 2021.Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis, In: Sinclair Lewis: Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth, Library Classics of the United States, New York, 2002 (first published in 1925)The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni, Penguin Books, New York, 1972 (first published in 1827)The End of October, Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020Links to sound clips:Romeo & Juliet, Act 5, Scene 2 – Shakespeare at PlayContagion (2011) – Steven Soderbergh, director; Scot Z. Burns, writer Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.  Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWhile in Oslo, Norway visiting family, Russell Teagarden went to the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) to speak with Øystein Ustvedt, who is a curator and noted expert on the art of Edvard Munch. The interview concentrates on Munch’s work expressing emotional dimensions of anxiety, illness, grief, and suffering. Ustvedt talks about how Munch’s life story explains the sources for his empathy and artistic inclinations, identifies and discusses the paintings particularly effective in expressing emotions illness and suffering generate, and considers how Munch’s work could benefit health professions students and practitioners. Russell’s 5½-year-old granddaughter teaches him how to say, “National Museum” and “goodbye,” in Norwegian, with varying success.Links:Links to paintings discussed:Puberty (1894) The Sick Child (1885) Spring (1891) Sick Girl (Christian Krogh, 1881)Death in the Sickroom (1893) The Spanish Flu (1919)Between the Clock and the Bed (1940-1943)Melancholy (1892) The Scream (1893)Link to Russell Teagarden’s blog piece in According to the Arts on Øystein Ustvedt’s book, Edvard Munch: An Inner Life.Link to National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet), OsloThanks to Benedict Teagarden for the idea of speaking with an expert on Edvard Munch while in Oslo, and to Ingvild for the Norwegian language lessons. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailThe millions of families dealing with Alzheimer’s disease produce millions of their own stories. We focus on two particular elements that can be part of a family’s story about dementia. One, from a collection of autobiographical stories, centers on an adult daughter with a long-standing, and justifiable antipathy towards her mother, who nevertheless finds a way to aid her when dementia takes hold. And, while doing so, she finds a new relationship with her mother and takes delight in the personality dementia produces for a time. The other, drawn from a novel, centers on various forms of denial a wife exhibits over several years of her husband’s dementia progression. Featured Content Sources:Stories from, The Faraway Nearby, by Rebecca Solnit, Penguin Books, 2014Novel, We Are Not Ourselves, by Matthew Thomas, Simon & Shuster, 2014Links:From Russell Teagarden’s blog, According to the Arts: The Faraway Nearby, by Rebecca Solnit: the book; comparison of excerpts with biomedical textWe Are Not Ourselves, by Matthew ThomasThanks to Alexis Teagarden, PhD, for bringing Rebecca Solnit’s, The Faraway Nearby, to our attention.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Episode image credit: Alzheimer's disease, artwork. Florence Winterflood. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWhat could it be like to have dementia? We can’t know. But the arts can imagine what people with dementia could be going through, and many works have been produced for that purpose. We feature a literary novel (The Wilderness), and a play (The Father) and its movie adaptation, offering sophisticated renderings of dementia for consideration. In the course of our conversation about these works and how they imagine dementia, we include: how an illusionist was part of the creative team in The Father to produce a sense of disorientation among audience members; how the metaphor of “the wilderness” is used in the novel and more broadly in various texts from the beginning of civilization; and how well the psalm used in the novel worked and builds on the place of psalms as texts for understanding how people react when threatened by significant life events.Featured Content Sources:The Wilderness, by Samantha Harvey, Anchor Books, 2009.The Father (play), Florian Zeller playwright, Doug Hughes director, Christopher Hampton translator, NYC Broadway 2016 + tour sites, London West End 2015 + tour sites.The Father (movie), Florian Zeller screenwriter and director, Christopher Hampton translator, Trademark Films, release date US – 2/26/21, available through many streaming services. Links:Russell Teagarden’s associated blog pieces at According to the Arts: The Wilderness: the novel and literary excerpts compared with biomedical textThe Father: the play and the movieRussell Teagarden’s review of The Father (movie) in the journal, The Pharos.Podcast episode 6, which features dementia related to Parkinson’s disease and expressed through the poetry (sonnets) of Micheal O’Siadhail is here.Background information on development of Alzheimer’s disease as an obscure and rare disease to a broad categorization of dementia: Patrick Fox.  From Senility to Alzheimer's Disease: The Rise of the Alzheimer's Disease Movement. The Milbank Quarterly 1989; 67:58-102.Claudia Chaufan, Brooke Hollister, Jennifer Nazareno, Patrick Fox. Medical ideology as a double-edged sword: The politics of cure and care in the making of Alzheimer’s disease. Soc Sci Med 2012;74:788-795.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWe look to three sources, a movie (The Mountain), a documentary film (The Lobotomist), and a nonfiction book (Desperate Remedies), for perspectives on human fallibility and folly in American asylum psychiatry during the first half of the 20th century. We focus in particular on the consequences of the overconfidence asylum psychiatry exhibited, the problem of medical knowledge in play, and the vulnerability of affected people from an absence of agency. These sources pointed to lobotomies, dental extractions, abdominal eviscerations, insulin comas, and other like illustrative interventions as case studies of what were once hailed as best medical practices that became horrors later. Recognizing that human fallibility and folly are an unchangeable feature of the human condition, we muse about whether we are any less exposed to such horrors today and forever. Content Sources:The Mountain – writer / director Rick Alverson, Vice Studios, 2018. The Lobotomist – writer Barak Goodman, producers and directors Barak Goodman and John Maggio / American Experience (PBS) /available online at Vimeo, 2008. Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness ­­– author Andrew Scull / Belknap, 2022. Audio clips from the documentary film, The Lobotomist, credits here.Links:Russell Teagarden’s blog pieces at According to the Arts on The Mountain and Desperate Remedies.Other related blog pieces at According to the Arts:Civilization and Madness:  A History of Madness in the Age of Reason, Michel FoucaultBirth of the Clinic:  An Archeology of Medical Perception, Michel FoucaultThe Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O’Farrell The Lobotomist is available online at Vimeo. Francisco Goya’s painting referenced in the episode, The Madhouse.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWe look at two literary descriptions of self-poisoning through the novels, Belladonna and Madame Bovary, and compare them with classic biomedical texts. We focus on how vividly the literary texts depict what people can go through after having poisoned themselves with belladonna or arsenic, how well these descriptions represent or elaborate on biomedical texts and teaching, and the applications they offer to health care practitioners, students, and the general public.  We are joined by Dr. Kamna Balhara and Dr. Andrew Stolbach, both of whom are associate professors and emergency medicine physicians at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Dr. Balhara also holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in French studies, is a founder and co-director of Health Humanities at Johns Hopkins Emergency Medicine (H3EM), and is a member of the Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine. Dr. Stolbach is also a medical toxicologist and holds a Master’s Degree in Public Health. Better guests for this episode could not be found. Their expertise on and enthusiasm for the topic and content sources make for an engaging episode.Links to content sources:Literary:Belladonna, by Daša Drndić, translated by Celia Hawkesworth, New York, New Directions, 2017.Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, Translated by Geoffrey Wall. New York, NY: Penguin Classics; 2003.Biomedical:Goldfrank’s Toxicologic Emergencies, 11e. McGraw Hill; 2019. Goodman & Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, 13e, New York, McGraw-Hill, 2018.Case study: Unseasonal severe poisoning of two adults by deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna). Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health. 2000;120(2):127-130.The Poisoner's Handbook, by Deborah Blum. New York, NY: Penguin Books; 2010.Russell Teagarden’s blog pieces on Belladonna and Madame Bovary at According to the Arts.Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Send us Fan Mail“To have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt,” Professor Elaine Scarry has said, and furthermore stipulates that, “Physical pain not only resists language, but actively destroys it.” She has suggested “fictional analogs” could have application in conveying the existence of pain where there is doubt. We consider whether the speculative novel, The Illumination, could serve as a fictional analog. The novel centers on a sudden phenomenon in which a light shines from the part of anyone’s body where there is pain, and so erases any doubt. Though the author’s motivation for the phenomenon was not based on Scarry’s premise, we contemplate possible applications for it in Biomedicine and other realms where people in pain seek help.We are joined by Dr. Ron Boeding from the iSpine Clinics located in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota metropolitan area, serving patients from Minnesota and western Wisconsin. The clinics specialize in spine, neck, and extremity pain disorders and offer comprehensive pain management, interventional procedures, and physical medicine services. Dr. Boeding is board certified in family medicine and interventional pain management. Sources: PrimaryThe Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier, Pantheon, 2011. It was named a Best Book of the Year in 2011 by National Public Radio, The Seattle Times, The Kansas City Star, and Philadelphia City Paper.SecondaryThe Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry, Oxford University Press, 1985The Culture of Pain by John B. Morris, University of California Press, 1991Link:Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on The IlluminationPlease send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailOn this episode, we talk with Dr. Ross Slotten about his memoir, Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey through the AIDS Crisis. He covers the time from when he entered family medicine practice just as AIDS was emerging, through the crisis, and the decades since as both a physician and a member of the at-risk community of gay men on the north side of Chicago. We also talk with Dr. Slotten about two other sources covering the early years of the AIDS crisis: a documentary film about the first country’s first AIDS unit at San Francisco General Hospital, and a literary novel about a group of gay men with AIDS or at risk for AIDS in Chicago.  More about Dr. Slotten’s background is here, which includes authorship of the book, The Heretic in Darwin’s Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace (published by Columbia University Press, 2006). Sources:Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey through the AIDS Crisis by Ross Slotten, published 2020, University of Chicago Press5B, directed by Paul Haggis and Dan Krauss, released June 2019The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, published 2019Russell Teagarden’s blog pieces on episode sources:Plague Years5BThe Great BelieversRecommendations (we didn’t have time to talk about):Rent (play, movie), Jonathan LarsonAngels in America (play, movie), Tony KushnerBlue (movie), Derek JarmanPlease send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWe feature four different angles addressing the opioid crisis, mostly as the opioid product OxyContin is involved and as the Appalachian region is affected. Our objective is to show how realms outside Biomedicine—the Humanities, in this case—can provide a range of perspectives suited to preferences, interests, and needs for understanding a particular issue. The four angles we feature are: nonfiction investigative journalism; nonfiction dramatization; narrative nonfiction; and literary fiction. We consider different approaches to selecting the best choice or the best order among available options. Source Citations:Macy B. Dopesick. New York; Little, Brown, and Company, 2018Strong D. Dopesick. John Goldwyn Productions, 2021 (streamed on Hulu)Keefe PR. Empire of Pain. New York; Doubleday, 2021.Kingsolver B. Demon Copperhead; Harper, 2022. (Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)Links:Russell Teagardens According to the Arts blog pieces mentioned in the podcast: Dopesick (nonfiction book – investigative) Dopesick (TV miniseries)Empire of Pain (narrative nonfiction)Demon Copperhead (novel) Russell Teagarden’s article in The Pharos comparing Dopesick (the book and the TV miniseries) with Demon CopperheadRecommendations:Barbara Kingsolver in conversation with Beth Macy (Nov 2, 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSglbhS1-WU&t=15s De Quincey T. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. New York; Penguin Classics, 2003. (See Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on this book here.) Daudet A. In the Land of Pain. (Translator Julian Barnes) New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. (See Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on this book here.)Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWe consider “illness as loss” through three different scenarios from Lionel Shriver’s novel, So Much For That. The three scenarios are: sociopsychological, financial, and clinical. We focus on how the literary novel form isolates these scenarios and offers fully reflective accounts of how people can be affected by them. We also note how literary fiction can be the only or best medium for subjects often too sensitive for public forums such as whether money can be an object in health care decisions. We spend some time distinguishing illness as what people experience subjectively from a particular health problem, and disease as the pathophysiological basis for a particular health problem. Dan talks about how illness as loss is a useful concept for discerning the help people may need, and how using the word “loss” can be a valuable tool for helping them.Citation:Shriver L. So Much For That. New York; HarperCollins, 2010.Links: Russell Teagarden's blog pieces mentioned in the podcast:Review of So Much For ThatA comparison of biomedical and literary descriptions of familial dysautonomiaDistinguishing disease, illness, and sicknessElements of illnessIllness as lossRecommendations:The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Jean-Dominique Bauby (memoir and movie)On His Blindness, John Milton, poem, recommended by inhouse rhetorician and literary editor, Alexis TeagardenRick Beato interview with Keith Jarret, recommended by inhouse musical director and cultural editor, Benedict Teagarden Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Image: Pemba Island School for Disabled (credit: Marcel Oosterwijk, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailThe internationally-acclaimed poet, Micheal O’Siadhail (pronounced, Meehawl O’Sheel), joins us to talk about One Crimson Thread, a memoir of 150 sonnets he wrote about the last two years of his late wife’s life with Parkinson’s disease. O’Siadhail reads four sonnets from the book relating directly to clinical scenarios familiar to health care providers, caregivers, and family members, and to the trajectory Parkinson’s disease exhibits. We discuss the insights they offer that extend beyond those of conventional biomedical sources. O’Siadhail also tells us how the forms of poems contribute to their meaning, and offers thoughts on what drives fear of poetry among many, a fear that could needlessly result in missing the 150 opportunities in the book to better appreciate the array of issues confronting people with Parkinson’s disease than is otherwise possible. Citation:Micheal O’Siadhail. One Crimson Thread. Waco, Tx; Baylor University Press, 2015.Links:The sonnets read are reproduced and issues discussed during the podcast are summarized in Russell Teagarden’s companion blog piece in According to the Arts.Micheal O’Siadhail’s website is here.Baylor University Press details for One Crimson Thread are here.Reminders:Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWe explore two paintings, each rendering one of two different perspectives on tuberculosis (TB). We first take a close look at Alice Neel’s 1940 painting, T.B. Harlem, and focus on how it depicts the suffering and destruction TB caused, and reveals some of the social determinants of TB at the time. We then examine Thomas Lawrence’s 1794 painting, Portrait of Catherine Rebecca Grey, Lady Manners, and work through how it conveys the convergence of TB clinical manifestations with beauty ideals at the time.Links:Here are the links for the paintings we discuss:T.B. Harlem, Alice Neel, 1940, oil on canvas Portrait of Catherine Rebecca Grey, Lady Manners, Thomas Lawrence (1794), oil on canvasThe Sick Child, Edvard Munch, 1907, oil on canvas  Background sources:JAMA issue featuring cover with Alice Neel painting, T.B. Harlem, and William Barclay commentary.Russell Teagarden’s According to the Arts blog piece on T.B. Harlem.Hoban P. Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2010. Day, C. Consumptive Chic. London, Bloomsbury Visual Art; 2017, 189 pages.Russell Teagarden’s According to the Arts blog piece on Carolyn Day’s book, Consumptive Chic.Day C, Rauser A. Thomas Lawrence’s Consumptive Chic: Reinterpreting Lady Manners’s Hectic Flush in 1794, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 49, no. 4 (2016) pp. 455–74. (Not open access)Russell Teagarden’s According to the Arts blog pieces on The Sick Child, and on Munch’s approach to his painting, and podcast episode with Øystein Ustvedt, curator and Munch expert on Munch's paintings rendering illness, suffering, and grief.Here's an image representative of the 1990s fashion trend known as “Heroin Chic” that we referred to during the podcast. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWe draw from two short stories published long ago, but recently discovered, that help us discern whether current problems associated with professionalism in health care and access to health care are unique to our time, or whether they have always been with us in one form or another. One of the stories is Anton Chekhov’s At the Pharmacy, written in 1885 and found in the late 1990s, and the other story is Raymond Chandler’s It’s All Right – He Only Died, written in the late 1950s and found in 2017. A throughline from these stories led us to the classic, 1978 satirical novel, The House of God, by Samuel Shem. We consider its importance to health care professionalism at the time—including our own professional behavior—and whether its influence persists. We conclude musing about how the perspectives these sources offer can be used in modern-day health care. Links:See Russell Teagarden’s blog postings at According to the Arts for further analysis of the short stories featured in this podcast, At the Pharmacy (Chekhov) and It’s All Right – He Only Died (Chandler).At the Pharmacy is included in the anthology, The Undiscovered Chekhov: Thirty-Eight New Stories, as is the story of how the translator, Peter Constantine, found these unpublished works more than a century after they were written. An online version of At the Pharmacy is published in the weekly newsletter, Falltide.It’s All Right – He Only Died, was published in The Strand Magazine, along with the story of its discovery sixty years after it was first written. The version of The House of God we referenced in the podcast is the Berkley trade paperback edition, 2010.After the podcast was released, the New York Times published an investigative report  concerning the operation of the New York University emergency department on December 22, 2022 indicating that what Chandler described in his short story is still in practice. And a Kaiser Family Foundation report published on December 21, 2022 concerning the policies and practices many individual hospitals apply in collecting money their patients owe them shows how the issues raised in Chekhov's story still exist. Also:Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWe feature James Dickey’s poem, Diabetes, with our guest, the renowned physician-poet Dr. Jack Coulehan. We discuss insights the poem offers about the trajectory of type 2 diabetes from the time of symptom onset until the time a balance is achieved between maximum compliance with disease management requirements and the compromises an acceptable lifestyle can necessitate for many individuals. In addition to providing his perspectives on how the poem expands on the biomedical components of diabetes in recognizing effects such as fear, anxiety, frustration, and oppression, Dr. Coulehan recounts how he has used this poem and others in teaching medical students and residents. He also tells stories of particular instances in which he used poetry as part of the care he provided certain patients, and as a way to connect with them. Links:Dr. Jack Coulehan’s bio at Stonybrook University is here.The poem, Diabetes, and the comparative biomedical text discussed can be seen here in Russell Teagarden’s blog, According to the Arts. Dr. Coulehan’s poem, I’m Gonna Slap Those Doctors, which was central to one of the stories he told, can be accessed here. And, his poem, The Man with Stars Inside Him, which was central to another story he told, can be accessed here.In this episode, we make a distinction between illness as the subjective perceptions of a health problem and disease as the pathological basis of a health problem. This distinction is explained in much greater depth here in According to the Arts. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.  Executive producer:  Anne Bentley

Send us Fan MailWhat can it be like to have epileptic seizures? We draw from four sources—a memoir, two novels, and a movie. In particular, we the cover how these sources depict convulsive seizure events as people may experience them, the physical and mental harm they can produce, and the adaptations to daily activities and life plans they motivate. We compare these renderings with a description from classic biomedical text, and offer thoughts on how they can expand the understanding of the ways epileptic seizures affect the lives of those who suffer from them, and reveal possibilities for better lives they could achieve. Bibliographic information on featured episode sources:Eichenwald K. A Mind Unraveled. New York, Ballantine Books, 2018.Dostoevsky F. The Idiot. Oxford, Oxford World Classics, 1992.Harding P. Tinkers. New York, Bellevue Literary Press. 2009.Higgins B. Electricity. Stone City Films. 2014.Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 21st ed, New York, McGraw Hill, 2022.Additional text on the comparison between literary and biomedical text covering generalized tonic-clonic seizures, including a mapping of literary and biomedical texts for the different components of a seizure, is posted here at According to the Arts.Other books to consider on the topic of how people experience epileptic seizures:David B. Epileptic. New York, Pantheon Books, 2005. (graphic novel)Fadiman A. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York, Farrar, Straus and Geroux, 1997. (nonfiction)Send us comments, recommendations,  and questions at: [email protected] producer:  Anne BentleySubscribe to The Clinic & The Person at wherever you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan MailWe examine excerpts from Siri Hustvedt’s novel, The Blindfold, and from Joan Didion’s essay, In Bed, for the perspectives they offer on what people experience when migraines strike them. We discuss how Hustvedt’s and Didion’s renderings of migraines add to classic biomedical descriptions, and consider the implications of migraine prevalence on the degree of suffering, functioning, and health care consumption. We muse about how these literary texts and others like them can be applied in helping people who suffer migraines and in helping people who care for them.Additional background on the excerpts we cover, and excerpts from other books describing the effects of migraine are in Russell Teagarden’s blog, According to the Arts. An expanded analysis of the physical effects of migraine as depicted in The Blindfold can also be found on the blog here. Some migraine prevalence data available from open-source publications are here and here.Bibliographic information:The Blindfold, Siri Hustvedt, Picador, New York, 1992In Bed: In The White Album, Joan Didion, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1979Thanks to Alexis Teagarden, PhD, for bringing Joan Didion's essay to our attention.Executive producer:  Anne BentleySubscribe to The Clinic & The Person at wherever you get your podcasts. Send us comments and questions at: [email protected].

Send us Fan MailIntroducing The Clinic & The Person, a podcast presenting works from the Humanities that bring knowledge and perspectives about particular clinical events and health care situations. The episode describes how the cohosts draw works from the Humanities and how health care professionals, educators, researchers, counsellors, and caregivers among others can apply them. The cohosts tell how their professional careers motivated them to create the podcast.  Executive producer:  Anne BentleyFor a preview of some – not all – of the topics and content that the podcast will cover,  see Russell Teagarden's blog, According to the Arts.Follow us wherever you get your podcasts.Send us comments and questions at: [email protected].