Towards a ‘critical medical humanities’

Abstract

In Mark Haddon’s (2012) novel The Red House a junior doctor diagnoses a rare condition that causes a mother’s baby to be stillborn. Disconcertingly, the doctor not only ‘seemed pleased with himself for knowing the biology behind such a rare syndrome’, but also ‘gave the impression that she [the mother] was meant to feel pleased too, for having won some sort of perverse jackpot’ (Haddon 2012: 103). Observations such as Haddon’s seem to confirm the intuitive rationale for the inclusion of the medical humanities in medical education – to educate for sensitivity, so that we do not produce doctors who place cases and smart diagnoses before persons and feelings. The term ‘medical humanities’ may appear to be exclusive of healthcareprofessionals other than doctors. For this reason, the ‘health humanities’ and the ‘humanities in healthcare’ are becoming preferred terms, especially in North America (Jones et al. 2014). However, in this chapter, I use ‘medical humanities’ because I refer specifically to medicine and medical education. The medical humanities offer four contested and fragmented fields – all of which are addressed to some extent within this edited volume:• The humanities studying medicine: such as history of medicine or the critical evaluation of medicine in literature.