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A newsletter from the Division of Medical Humanities at NYU Langone Health
May 14, 2021

How Are the Arts and Humanities Used in Medical Education? Results of a Scoping Review

Lead author Tracy Moniz, MA, PhD, and colleagues conducted a scoping review to identify how the arts and humanities are used to educate physicians and interprofessional learners across the continuum of medical education in Canada and the United States.

Translational Humanities for Public Health

Translational Humanities for Public Health is a project that identifies and disseminates humanities-based (and humanities-inspired) responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project, from the Rice University Medical Futures Lab, documents these creative efforts to help others benefit from them, and to bring tools for understanding the human experience to communities in need of support during this time of crisis.

You Can’t Dissect a
Virtual Cadaver

"Medical education—particularly Clinical Gross Anatomy—offers a window into what is lost when we lose in-person learning," writes Michael Denham, a second-year medical student, in this essay that contrasts the formative time students spend in the anatomy lab with the virtual anatomy instruction necessary during the pandemic.

"Sharing Our Stories": Special Issue of Families, Systems, & Health

Family, Systems, & Health recently published a special online issue on the themes of COVID-19 and/or racial injustice, featuring narrative, poetry, haiku, and 55-word stories by those in the health care community.

Highlights from Projects and People in
Humanities and Ethics at NYU Langone Health

Featured Annotation:
Gretl Lam on Dylan Mortimer's painting Tree, Broken Tree

"[Dylan Mortimer] not only creates art about the challenges of cystic fibrosis, with broken lungs and purulent mucus, but also about his gratitude for the lung transplants and their gift of life."

Louis Menand Examines the Churn of American Culture After World War II

David Oshinsky, PhD, director of the Division of Medical Humanities at NYU Langone, reviews Louis Menand's The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, which "covers the interchange of arts and ideas between the United States and Europe in the decades following World War II."



The Burns Archive Photo of the Week
 

Dissection “It’s All Over Now” - University of Maryland School of Medicine, circa 1915

Posing with cadavers was mainly an American practice of young medical students. These are classic ‘rite of passage’ photographs, which students took for their initiation into the practice of medicine. The genesis of dissection photography derives from two important sources, the engravings of dissection scenes presented in anatomical texts and the paintings of sixteenth-century masters, such as Rembrandt’s (1606–1669) The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp painted in 1632. With the advent of photography, medical students continued the custom. During each decade, the composition and posing changed, and it became popular to write slogans on the dissection table in about 1890. In this era, the oiled cloth lab coats were often inscribed with various handwritten comments. Dissection photographs were popular and ubiquitous from 1880 to 1930.
      It was not until the early 1880s that dissection became legal in most states, a result of an outrageous grave robbing incident. In 1879, the body of former United States Senator John Scott Harrison was stolen and shipped to The Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati. He was the son of President William Henry Harrison (1841) and the father of Senator and President-to-be Benjamin Harrison (1888). The national uproar instigated by his son brought liberal changes in the dissection laws. Prior to that time, in many states, only the bodies of condemned criminals were legally available for dissection. Grave robbing was the response to the shortage of cadavers needed to teach medical students. After dissection became legal, dissection photography evolved into a type of occupational photograph, which was taken by almost all medical students. The privacy concerns of the later twentieth century ended this practice. In some medical institutions dissecting cadavers has been discontinued, replaced with students learning from computerized devices and mannequins.
      Knowledge of anatomy and dissection was the primary distinctive aspect of the medical profession since the renaissance, and the camera offered late nineteenth-century American medical students a visual memento of their entrance into the profession.

With thanks to The Burns Archive for providing historic medical photographs and commentary for this weekly feature
 

Quick Links

Calls for Submission & Other Opportunities

Gold Humanism Scholars at the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators
The Arnold P. Gold Foundation is sponsoring partial scholarships of $5,000 for up to two Gold Humanism Scholars at the Harvard Macy Institute 2021/2022 Program for Educators. They seek to support medical and nursing educators working to develop and enhance educational projects focused on achieving humanistic patient care that can be replicated across a variety of healthcare delivery settings. Faculty from an accredited school of medicine or nursing in the US and Canada are eligible (not open to trainees). Application deadline June 15, 2021. More information.

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Events & Conferences

MAY
15

Writing the Historical Essay With Hadley Meares

In this four-part workshop, learn to write your own historical essay through a research-based lens.
Section A: Meets Saturdays beginning May 15
Section B: Meets Saturdays beginning June 19
MAY
15

Healing/Arts Workshop with Shilpa Darivemula
MAY
17

What's Your Story? Becoming a Physician Writer

Speaker: Suzanne Koven, MD
Part of the 2021 Women in Medicine Lecture Series
MAY
19

MedHumChat: Break and Mend

Society tells us to hide our imperfections, but those imperfections are precisely what make each of us unique. Join the #MedHumChat community to tap into the healing power of embracing our flaws.
MAY
20

Art as Ritual Surrounding Death

MAY
20

Online Course: How to Effectively Communicate Your Science to Any Audience
MAY
28

On the Pain of Poetry

The fourth and final lecture in the lecture and workshop series "Bio and Psyche: Reading the Symptomatic Body"
Speaker: Travis Chi Wing Lau
MAY
28
-29

Wilson College Humanities Conference: Healthcare in/and Humanities

JUN
2

Narrative Medicine Rounds with Freestyle Love Supreme Academy
JUN
6

5th Annual UnLonely Film Festival Launch Event

The 5th Annual UnLonely Film Festival is a collection of 40 short-narrative, animated, and documentary films dealing with the issue of loneliness. They are available to stream at unlonelyfilms.org all year long.
JUN
10

The Arnold P. Gold Foundation Annual Gala

Honoring Drs. Anthony Fauci, Wayne Riley, and Eric Topol with the National Humanism in Medicine Medal
JUN
15
-17

Association for Medical Humanities Conference 2021: Making Space

Held at the University of Limerick, 15-17 June 2021
Thru
JUNE
21

THE LINE Encore Streaming

First performed live on Zoom on July 8, 2020, the world premiere play was viewed more than 55,000 times in 18 countries during its limited streaming run last summer. Crafted from firsthand interviews with New York City medical first responders during the COVID-19 pandemic, THE LINE cuts through the media and political noise to reveal the lived experiences of frontline medical workers.
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
– Robert Frost
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