Ebook: A doctor's dictionary: writings on culture & medicine

In this wide-reaching abecedarium, doctor and poet Iain Bamforth dissects the conflict of values embodied in what we call medicine—never entirely a science and no longer quite the art it used to be. Bamforth brings to bear his experience of medicine from around the world, from the hightech American Hospital of Paris to community health centres of Papua, along with his engaging interest in the stranger manifestations of medical matters in relation to art, literature and culture. Drawing on the lives and ideas of some of Europe's most celebrated writers, from Auden to Zola with stop-offs at the.;Cover; Title Page; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgements; Anecdote A Taste of Bitter Almonds; Bodies The Plastinator; Cynicism Knock! Knock!; Depression A Conspiracy of Good Intentions; Ethics Insomnia (in the Bed of Being); Funerals An American Book of the Dead; Galen Crise de Foie; Happiness The Moral Life of Happiness; Integrity An Empty Plot; Journeys Chekhov Goes to Sakhalin; Kafka Uncle Siegfried; Language Is There Life on Earth?; Mouth Tell Me about Teeth; Nose Hygiene of the Soul; Obit The Importance of Being an Agoraphobe; Posture The Human Position; Qi Emergent Properties.