by claratimsit
Abiding by the containment requirements is a class privilege. The most insecure do not have the luxury of telecommuting or sitting on their wages for a few months. And death has always been part of everyday life—it is in the night, it is in the streets, it is in hunger, it is in power, it is in fathers and husbands.
Categories: Comment • Tags: capitalism, death, disease, medicine, mexico, poverty, social class
A short comment, published in the 11 December 2014 issue of Nature and entitled “Ditch the term pathogen,” is the most interesting, thought-provoking piece that I have ever read in that distinguished science magazine, and, over the years, I have read quite a few. The argument of the authors, Arturo Casadevall and Liise-anne Pirofski, is that the idea that diseases are caused by external agents—pathogens, bad microbes—is incorrect and part of an oversimplistic paradigm. This paradigm, which can be associated […]
Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: bacteria, Charlie Hebdo, FBI, Freud, history of science, medicine, Nietzsche, poetry, politics, science
I’ve gone the past week without internet as I was relocating into my new southern home and lifestyle, and taking regular dips in the public pool became more important than calling Time Warner to schedule an appointment. Alas, we have caved and are returning to “normalcy”, but in the mean time all I have been reading are Durham new-resident-guides and one phenomenal collection of essays that may not overtly seem connected to sexuality, but certainly harps on an interpersonal quality that […]
Categories: Caterina Gironda, ZiR • Tags: empathy, gender, medicine
by sjzeteo2015
Surface and Depth, Medicine and Art By Stuart Johnson A review of The Art of Medicine: Over 2,000 Years of Images and Imagination, by Julie Anderson, Emma Barnes, and Emma Shackleton (The University of Chicago Press, 2012) The title of this volume signals a useful ambiguity. Medicine is a science, or a scientific practice, but it is also an art in the sense that the application of scientific medical principles to individual cases requires judgment and imagination. In that […]
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