Good People, by Singaporean playwright Haresh Sharma, unmasks racial and religious tensions between Singapore’s increasingly diverse racial groups and the attendant ramifications on the healthcare ecosystem and the doctor-patient relationship. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, this paper argues that, in Good People, Sharma employs theater as a site of resistance by calling into question state and medical authority. First, state authority is challenged through the play’s scrutiny of the ideological principle of multiculturalism and its usefulness in fostering meaningful (...) cross-cultural exchanges and acceptance of different cultural and religious beliefs in the clinic. Second, the play destabilizes medical authority by surfacing the complex relationship between the doctor’s unconscious biases, racial and religious prejudice, and clinical judgment, thereby casting doubt on medicine’s claims of objectivity. In doing so, this paper argues, the play resists simplistic binary categorizations of the behaviors and motivations of the characters into good/bad or right/wrong, instead raising questions about power, knowledge, and contesting truths within the confines of the cultural space of a hospice. (shrink)

This article considers how the metaphor of the vaccine line and the subjectivity of the line jumper came to frame COVID vaccination experiences. Drawing on analysis of interviews (n = 24) with self-identified vaccine line jumpers, this article reports on three narratives that arose across interviews: (1) vaccine line jumping is a necessary strategy of health-advocacy, (2) vaccines are personal healthcare tools earned through individual merit, and (3) vaccine refusal is a problem of belief rather than access. Findings advance research (...) about the personalization of vaccination and public health while contributing insights about the constrained subjectivities that people adopt in individualistic health landscapes. (shrink)

Deaths of Despair (DoD), or mortality resulting from suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related liver disease, have been rising steadily in the United States over the last several decades. In 2020, a record 186,763 annual despair-related deaths were documented, contributing to the longest sustained decline in US life expectancy since 1915–1918. This forum feature considers how health humanities disciplines might fruitfully engage with this era-defining public health catastrophe and help society better understand and respond to the crisis.

Describing someone as disabled means evaluating their relationship with their environment, body, and self. Such descriptions pivot on the person’s perceived limitations due to their atypical embodiment. However, impairments are not inherently pathological, nor are disabilities necessarily deviations from biological normality, a discrepancy often articulated in science fiction via the presentation of radically altered environments. In such settings, non-impaired individuals can be shown to be unsuited to the world they find themselves in. One prime example of this comes courtesy of (...) H. G. Wells’s “The Country of the Blind.” This paper demonstrates science fiction’s capacity to decouple disability’s normative quality from classical medical models stemming from the medical Enlightenment movement by challenging the idea of the biologically normal. It first provides a brief account of disability before exploring the concept of medical normality. It then problematizes the biologically consistent being, arguing that health is only understandable when environmentally situated. Next, the paper provides an overview of “The Country of the Blind” before analyzing how it challenges the idea of biological normality, framing it as a social product rather than a universal constant. Finally, the paper concludes that science fiction narratives effectively interrogate our world’s seemingly consistent trends by envisioning (un)desirable alternatives. (shrink)

A medical narrative from a woman in her 90s describes her childhood bout with diphtheria in Kansas City, Missouri, apparently immediately after vaccination, her confinement in the “pest hospital,” and her treatment with what she understood as a blood transfusion from a donor who was found through a radio appeal. In this essay, we trace the narrative back to the institutions, medical practices, and historical context, examining both the underlying history of medical practice and scientific understanding that is reflected in (...) her experience and also the contexts of that history, including racial and religious attitudes. (shrink)

New vaccines to prevent COVID-19 and malaria underscore the importance of scientific advances to promote public health globally. How is credit for such scientific discoveries attributed, and who benefits? The complex narrative of Amitav Ghosh’s _The Calcutta Chromosome_, both historical and speculative, demonstrates how medicine has come to value particular kinds of advances over others, prompting readers to question who controls access to resources and at what cost to global populations. In Ghosh’s imagined world, scientific discovery is evaluated and rewarded—and (...) ultimately deemed necessary—for its ability to serve communal, public health needs. (shrink)

The contemporary brain disorders debate echoes a century-long conflict between two different approaches to mental suffering: one that relies on natural sciences and another drawing from the arts and humanities. We review contemporary neuroimaging studies and find that neither side has won. The study of mental differences needs both the sciences and the arts and humanities. To help develop an approach mindful of both, we turn to physician-writer Anton Chekhov’s story “A Nervous Breakdown.” We review the value of the arts (...) and humanities as a coequal partner with natural sciences in the creation of a robust mental health humanities. (shrink)

Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) was legalized in Canada in 2016. Canadians’ opinions on the service are nuanced, particularly as the legislation changes over time. In this paper, we outline findings from our review of representations of MAiD in Canadian news media texts since its legalization. These stories reflect the concerns, priorities, and experiences of key stakeholders and function pedagogically, shaping public opinion about MAiD. We discuss this review of Canadian news media on MAiD, provide examples of four key themes (...) we identified (vulnerability, autonomy, dignity, and human rights), and discuss their implications for health policy and equity. Though key stakeholders share the values of autonomy, dignity, and human rights, they appeal to them in diverse ways, sometimes with conflicting policy demands. These representations offer a useful gauge of how views about MAiD continue to shift alongside changes in federal legislation. These stories can influence related policies, respond to the powerful voices that shape MAiD legislation, and have the potential to change national conversations. Our analysis adds to the existing body of scholarship on MAiD by examining post-Bill C-7 news media, identifying related health equity issues and tensions, and discussing potential impacts of MAiD’s representations in news media. (shrink)

The author would like to add the photographs which were inadvertently not included with the article.

The author would like to add the photographs which were inadvertently not included with the article.

The dominant discourse on dementia promotes a view that as individuals progress with the disease, they experience a neurological decline causing a loss of self. This notion, grounded in a Cartesian representation of selfhood, associates a loss of self as directly related to cognition. This paper presents an alternative anthropological framework, embodied selfhood, that challenges this representation. It then examines a potential tool, graphic medicine, to translate this theory into caregiving practice. Through analyzing three graphic novels—Wrinkles, Tangles, and Aliceheimer’s—this paper (...) demonstrates how tension exists between different conceptions of selfhood and associated implications for caregivers and patients alike. (shrink)

Pharmaceuticals are present in various water sources used by wildlife and as drinking water for humans. Research shows that certain pharmaceuticals, sold over the counter and by prescription only, can harm wildlife. Moreover, the human ingestion of water contaminated by polypharmacy presents a potential cause for concern for human health. Despite the wide scope of this problem, environmental bioethics has not adequately engaged with this topic and, instead, has concerned itself with healthcare waste products more generally. The present essay calls (...) for more ethical investigation on the topic. (shrink)

This essay proposes an expansion of the concept of narrative competence, beyond close reading, to include two more skills: the collaborative construction and compelling performance of stories. To show how this enhanced form of narrative competence can be attained, the essay describes Off Script, a cocurricular medical storytelling program with three phases: 1) creative writing workshop, 2) dress rehearsal, and 3) public performance of stories. In these phases, Off Script combines literary studies, creative writing, reflective practice, collegial feedback, and drama. (...) With increased narrative competence, Off Script participants are likely better equipped to engage in more impactful health advocacy and partner with patients more effectively. (shrink)

This paper examines twenty-first-century research on sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) alongside mid-nineteenth-century research on hysteria. Doing so sheds light on how we have long thought of sensorial-emotional experience as progressing along a medical narrative from _cause_ to _cure_. Today’s rhetoric around the highly sensitive person (HSP) begins to diverge from the rhetoric around hysteria through the theorized cause and the dismissal of the need for a cure. When current perspectives remove the emphasis on a cure, the narrative emphasizes a broader (...) need for social-emotional learning and cultural revision to stigma around sensitivity. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the illness and recovery of the depressed Moses Herzog, the protagonist of Saul Bellow’s novel _Herzog_ ( 1964 ). Using this novel as a case study, I criticize a one-sided (neuro)biological and drug-based approach to depression. Referring to the hermeneutic anthropology of philosophers like Paul Ricoeur and Marya Schechtman, I argue that the treatment of depression could benefit from a broader approach that takes into account existential and social-cultural factors as well as biological factors. I (...) suggest that narrative psychiatry offers a framework wherein various models of mental illness may be combined in ways that move beyond a pro/contra bio-psychiatry binary. By investigating depression using philosophical ideas and a literary text, this article aims to illustrate how the humanities may contribute to our thinking about depression. (shrink)

Biohacking involves individuals determining, developing, and directing relevant activities to meet their personal biological goals. Biohacking fertility is a resilient method that trans and genderqueer people use to meet their reproductive and family-planning needs in the face of historic medical marginalization and oppression. In this study, nine participants were recruited from three different Facebook groups specific to queer and trans fertility, family planning, pregnancy, and parenting. Each participant’s posts and comments to their respective Facebook group(s) were analyzed, followed by interviews (...) with participants. A total of 1,155 Facebook posts were collected. Biohacking activity—understood as a web of activity including gathering information, applying knowledge to personal circumstances, and sharing personal experiences and knowledge—was found in each of the three groups. Participants identified these online groups as safer spaces to learn more about their own fertility and find community. Participants were active in these groups to biohack their fertility at home and to become empowered at the doctor's office or fertility clinic, ultimately achieving agency in their fertility and family planning. (shrink)

Since the establishment of the modern prison system in the early nineteenth century, prisons and prisoners have been construed as sites of moral, social, and biological contagion. Historic and contemporary studies show that most prisoners experience severe health inequalities, higher rates of addiction and mental health issues, and lower life expectancy than the rest of the population. They also come from deprived social strata. Yet, these aspects of Irish penal history have been largely neglected in academia and popular histories. Our (...) article discusses two public history projects—an art installation, _The Trial_, and a museum exhibition, _Living Inside_—that engaged different publics with the long history of health and welfare in Irish prisons. Developed by the research team on the Wellcome Trust Investigator Award “Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in England and Ireland, 1850-2000,” based at University College Dublin, the projects adopted different methodologies to engage their audiences and explore the experience and management of health and welfare in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish prisons. We further examine the different methodological approaches of each project, their varied aims and audiences, and the impacts reported by audiences and participants. The article also considers some of the challenges of doing this kind of public history, both in terms of working with marginalized communities and presenting research about difficult subjects to various audiences. (shrink)

Seán O’Casey’s play _The Plough and the Stars_ presents audiences with a view of life in Dublin’s poverty-stricken tenements during the 1916 Easter Rising. Critical consensus holds that it is a play primarily concerned with the Easter Rising set against a backdrop of tenement life. This paper argues instead that this is a play about tuberculosis in Ireland set against the backdrop of the 1916 Easter Rising. The characters in the play place far more importance on tuberculosis and their impoverished (...) state than on politics or even the violence erupting in the streets. The fears and concerns regarding this infectious disease and its impact on poor communities appear in contrast to the characters’ annoyance and dismissal of the political events leading up to and including the Rising. (shrink)

This dossier article contains four short and varied contributions from activists and other service and healthcare providers who have been agitating and working on the frontlines of HIV/AIDS in Ireland since the early 1980s. The dossier contains: (1) a history, by Bill Foley, of the early collective efforts of a group of gay men to provoke government action and healthcare under the umbrella of Gay Health Action (GHA) (2) a speech delivered by Dr. Erin Nugent to government officials on the (...) re-branding of HIV Ireland in 2015; (3) a brief history, recounted by Noel Donnellan, of ACT UP Dublin since it was revitalized in 2016 by a small cohort of dedicated activists from a dormant group into a vibrant collective that has achieved great legislative change with regards to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP); and (4) a polemic, written by Thomas Strong, on living with HIV as a queer man in Ireland that demonstrates the ways in which HIV stigma not only thrives in but molds and shapes twenty-first-century gay men’s communities, both in real life and online. (shrink)

The paper argues that historic events in the western Irish town of Sligo were more substantial in shaping Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897) than previously thought. Biographers of Stoker have credited his mother, Charlotte Thornley Stoker, for influencing her son’s gothic imagination during his childhood by sharing tales of the Sligo cholera epidemic she had witnessed in 1832. While Charlotte Stoker’s written account of Sligo’s epidemic Experiences of the Cholera in Ireland (1873) influenced Bram Stoker, it is argued that as (...) a voracious library researcher he is likely to have cross-referenced it with other historical accounts. Furthermore, by viewing the text of Dracula through the lens of Charlotte Stoker’s account and the historical reportage of the epidemic, clear parallels emerge. Ultimately, the striking similarities between Sligo’s cholera are marshaled to argue that Count Dracula may be read as the personification of Sligo’s cholera. (shrink)

Jennifer Johnston’s fiction presents the conditions of Irish culture and society by exploring the separations between interior and exterior realms and past and present temporalities persisting within the insulating privacy of the familial home space. In _The Christmas Tree_ (1981), the home is both haven and prison for Johnston’s heroine. In this paper, I argue that the home—which assumes the form of the individual body and the familial home—is paradoxical. The protagonist leaves 1950s Ireland because of the country’s rigid gender (...) roles in order to pursue an autonomous life as a writer in England, but she is unable to publish her writing within the confines of the patriarchal publishing world. The home of her body becomes paradoxical when she becomes a single mother as an avenue for creativity but is then diagnosed with terminal cancer. She returns to her father’s home to die, which she re-orders and reclaims through the disorder of the uncanny—represented by her non-conformity and illness brought into the patriarchal home. By writing her life story and creating a brief, alternative maternal relationship with her young caretaker, the protagonist confronts her own ambivalence toward her parents, who also represent aspects of oppressive heteronormative gender expectations. (shrink)