Acts of humanity: the Wakley Prize 2021

Abstract

The characters of George Eliot's novel Middlemarch live through momentous times. It is the early 19th century. The railways are cutting mercilessly through the English countryside; Parliamentary reform is in the air, viciously debated at hustings and in the popular press; and in London, a new journal by the name of The Lancet has put the country's medical profession in an uproar. But this is not a story of great personages and heroic deeds. It is the tale of the choices made by individual people from diverse circumstances, the sort who might be well known in their local communities, but are destined to be forgotten by history. Yet Eliot asserts that their lives have importance. At the novel's conclusion, she writes that “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs”. 1 Eliot G Middlemarch. Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth1987 Google Scholar Eliot, in other words, maintains that “unhistoric acts”—small incidents of kindness, care, compassion, and conscience—can provide a shield against the evils of the world, and be a potent force for good. For this year's Wakley Prize, we are interested in essays that take place on a human scale in health-care and community settings, across their diversity of environments, of the “hidden life” whose contact with others provides moments of care, witness, challenge, humour, healing, understanding, or recovery. Medicine is, after all, largely defined by such acts of humanity in clinical encounters. They may be unresolved, transformative, unifying, or part of continuing care.