Browne, Janet E

Health Information & Libraries Journal

Browne, Janet

Harvard University - DASH

 A CD-Rom on Medicine in Literature  (Article begins on next page)The Harvard community has made this article openly available.Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters.Citation Browne, Janet. 2001. A CD-Rom on medicine in literature. Health Informationand Libraries Journal 18: 156-158.Published Version doi:10.1046/j.1471-1842.2001.00332.xAccessed February 18, 2015 2:19:14 AM ESTCitable Link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3363730Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University's DASH repository, andis made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other PostedMaterial, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAA 156 © Blackwell Science Ltd 2001 Health Information and Libraries Journal ,  18 , pp.156–158 Blackwell Science, Ltd A CD-ROM on medicine in literature Janet   Browne, Medical Historian (Life Sciences), Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 24 Eversholt Street, London NW1 1AD, UK The Wellcome Trust through its Medicine, Societyand History programme is sponsoring an excitingnew project in the history of medicine that bringstogether several wings of the Trust’s scholarlystaff. The plan is to create a highly visual self-directed learning module for medical students thatwill explain key concepts in the history of medicineby using examples drawn from English literatureand literature in translation. George Eliot’s DrLydgate will join Dr Zhivago, Sherlock Holmesand Dr Watson, Mr Rochester’s mad wife in theattic and others from European, Russian, Indianand American literature, old and new, western andnon-western, to provide a lively, richly illustratedand authoritative teaching product. The coursewill be supplied on CD-ROM suitable for loadingonto an intranet, with future provision for onlinedistribution, and is designed to ﬁt into UniversityCollege London’s medical curriculum as a specialstudy module. Written by historians at the newCentre for the History of Medicine at UCL, itwill showcase the world-famous resources ofthe Wellcome Library for the History andUnderstanding of Medicine and draw extensivelyon a wide range of stunning images from theIconographic collections, Medical PhotographicLibrary and Medical Film and Video Library.Electronic experts from the Wellcome Trust’sTropical Medical Resource are mastermindingdesign and production, using their experiencefrom creating similar teaching resources ontropical diseases. The course will be ready for trialsin 2001 and (with luck) released to students at thestart of the academic year 2002. If successful, it ishoped to make it available to other bodies.The impetus for this collaboration has comefrom the introduction of the new medical curric-ulum in London’s medical schools, in keepingwith recommendations from the General MedicalCouncil. The curriculum provides severalopportunities for prospective doctors to broadentheir education, especially in the humanities.These special study modules are, in part, intendedto help students understand the diversity of back-grounds and the cultural variety of the patients theywill eventually meet, as well as putting their ownparticipation in modern medicine in a widersocial  context. It was thought that a short courseon the relations between literature and medicinewould usefully introduce a range of issues andapproaches to the history of health and illnesswhich would encourage the student to acquire asense of the chronological development ofmedicine  and build a basic framework into whichmodern medical science can ﬁt. It aims to be asinclusive as possible, touching on nonwesternmedical systems as well as gender, professionaliza-tion, war and social issues. There are ulteriormotives too. Creative literature involves the per-sonal, the intimate, feelings of pain and joy. Whilethe course is necessarily selective, we hope it willstimulate medical students to think about theirpatients as people and of the health professional’splace in a long, fascinating, constantly changingtradition.It aims to supply six teaching sessions broadlycovering themes such as Doctors and Nursesin Literature, Medicine in Shakespeare’s Time,Diseases in Literature, Medicine and the Mind,Medical Utopias and Dystopias, and Medicinein Cultural Context. Each session will be prefacedby an introductory essay that sets out the theme.Summaries of the novels, and commentaries on theextracts are also included, although for reasonsof space not in the examples below. Each extractwill be illustrated with appropriate historicalimages, perhaps some snatches of ﬁlm for theFirst World War poets, for example. Supportingmaterials will supply the authors’ biographicaldetails, a pictorial timeline, self-test questions,details of the texts and visual sources, further read-ing in the history of medicine, and so on. Correspondence e-mail: j.browne@ucl.ac.uk HLR332.fm  Page 156  Friday, August 31, 2001  3:24 PM A CD-ROM on medicine in literature,  Janet Browne © Blackwell Science Ltd 2001 Health Information and Libraries Journal ,  18 , pp.156–158 157 The two examples given below offer opportuni-ties to explore perceptions of medicine, hospitals,monsters and madness in the nineteenth centuryvia the literary extracts and the accompanyingimages. We can only produce a glimpse here of thekind of multimedia resource that will eventually beproduced, but it is hoped that it will at least conveya ﬂavour of what should prove to be an innovativenew learning aid. Martin Chuzzlewit  by Charles Dickens, London 1844 ‘She was a fat old woman, this Mrs Gamp (Fig. 1),with a husky voice and a moist eye, which shehad a remarkable power of turning up, and onlyshowing the white of. Having very little neck, itcost her some trouble to look over herself, if onemay say so, at those to whom she talked. She worea very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff,and a shawl and bonnet to correspond. In thesedilapidated articles of dress she had, on principle,arrayed herself, time out of mind, on suchoccasions as the present; for they at once expresseda decent amount of veneration for the deceased,and invited the next of kin to present her with afresher suit of weeds: an appeal so frequentlysuccessful, that the very fetch and ghost of MrsGamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up,any hour in the day, in at least a dozen of thesecond-hand clothes shops about Holborn. Theface of Mrs Gamp—the nose in particular—wassomewhat red and swollen, and it was difﬁcult toenjoy her society without becoming conscious of asmell of spirits (Fig. 2). Like most persons whohave attained to great eminence in their profession,she took to hers very kindly; insomuch, that settingaside her natural predilections as a woman, shewent to a lying-in or a lying-out with zest andrelish.“Ah!” repeated Mrs Gamp; for it was always asafe sentiment in cases of mourning. “Ah dear!When Gamp was summonsed to his long home,and I see him a lying in Guy’s Hospital with aFigure 1 A convalescent woman trying in vain to rouse her hired nurse. Etching by Nicolaus I. W. C. von Heideloff, 1807, after Thomas RowlandsonFigure 2 A caricature of a drunken nurse. Wood engraving, artist unknown. With a red nose and a hand that gestures towards an almost empty brandy bottle, it is clear that the only thing this mid. 19th century nurse cares for is a tipple HLR332.fm  Page 157  Friday, August 31, 2001  3:24 PM A CD-ROM on medicine in literature,  Janet Browne © Blackwell Science Ltd 2001 Health Information and Libraries Journal ,  18 , pp.156–158 158 penny-piece on each eye, and his wooden legunder his left arm, I thought I should have faintedaway. But I bore up”.’ The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde  by Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh 1886 ‘Now, the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have oftenremarked) was professional in shape and size; itwas large, firm, white and comely. But the handwhich I now saw, clearly enough in the yellowlight of a mid-London morning, lying half shuton the bed-clothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, ofa dusky pallor, and thickly shaded with a swartgrowth of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde(Fig. 3).I must have stared upon it for near half aminute, sunk as I was in the mere stupidity ofwonder, before terror woke up in my breast assudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; andbounding from my bed, I rushed to the mirror(Fig. 4). At the sight that met my eyes, my bloodwas changed into something exquisitely thin andicy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I hadawakened Edward Hyde.’Figure 3 Head of a man, composed of nude ﬁgures. Oil painting, artist unknown. An image that vividly presents 19th century notions of the conﬂicting emotions that coexist in the human mindFigure 4 A man asleep dreaming of monsters. Etching by Fransisco Goya, 1796/98. In English, the caption reads, ‘The sleep of reason induces monstrous thoughts’. This ghoulish scene bears witness to the concept that the monster we fear is in fact the externalization of the monster from within. Stevenson said that The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was conceived after a nightmare HLR332.fm  Page 158  Friday, August 31, 2001  3:24 PM

A CD-Rom on Medicine in Literature

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A CD-Rom on Medicine in Literature

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