Journal of Medical Humanities最新文献

Written during a medical leave of absence from medical school, "self-portrait by way of erosion" is a reconciliation with loss of self and a representation of gradual surrender. The title was inspired by Ocean Vuong's "self-portrait as exit wounds," a favorite poem of the author's. "self-portrait by way of erosion" was selected as the 2nd place winner for the 2025 William Carlos Williams poetry competition, which recognizes and promotes a focus of the humanities in medicine. In the company of esteemed poets, Sara Khan and Makeen Yasar, the author presented this poem at the annual competition ceremony, invoking the question of what it means to accept or even befriend pain, especially when that pain seems invisible to others.

Written during a medical leave of absence from medical school, "self-portrait by way of erosion" is a reconciliation with loss of self and a representation of gradual surrender. The title was inspired by Ocean Vuong's "self-portrait as exit wounds," a favorite poem of the author's. "self-portrait by way of erosion" was selected as the 2nd place winner for the 2025 William Carlos Williams poetry competition, which recognizes and promotes a focus of the humanities in medicine. In the company of esteemed poets, Sara Khan and Makeen Yasar, the author presented this poem at the annual competition ceremony, invoking the question of what it means to accept or even befriend pain, especially when that pain seems invisible to others.

This article explores narrative as a feature of medical research writing and a means of incorporating patient-authored "perspectives" into the discourse of health and medicine. Focusing on published case reports that include a distinctive section devoted to the patient's perspective, I specifically examine how practitioner and patient narratives configure cases in different ways: the former based on conventions associated with clinical reporting; the latter based on embodied experience with illness and clinical care. My analysis shows how these perspectives can be both generative and limiting. On the one hand, they broaden the reach of patient narratives via inclusion in the research literature, and on the other hand, they have potential to conceptualize patient experience as mere perspective, supplementing the practitioner's sanctioned account rather than adding explanatory value to the case on its own terms. Acknowledging these challenges, I theorize narrative as a site of rhetorical possibility that recognizes the value of patient stories without unduly placing practitioners and patients on opposing sides of an expert/non-expert divide. The article concludes by suggesting avenues for development in areas of research, education, and clinical practice.

A follicle is a small cavity, sac, or gland out of which growth occurs. Hairs grow out of follicles, as do humans. The follicle, like the womb, is a speculative container of potential life. A menstruating woman loses numerous follicles with each cycle-only one will release an egg, and rarely is that egg fertilized. Medicine, technology, and big pharma have distorted this unlikely probability into a dominant narrative of, and social obsession with, reproductive futurity. With hormone stimulation, a standard part of the oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) process, one might produce numerous mature follicles and thus numerous eggs. Freezing then becomes a way both to preserve and heighten the fantasy of potentiality, thus circumventing Sabina Spielrein's notion that, in the reproductive instinct, there is also always already an instinct toward death ("Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being," 1912). Theorizing the follicle as both a space of speculation and of death, "reproductive cryopower" then refers to the biopolitics of cryogenic reproduction. This essay looks at cryonics in literature and film alongside the historical overlap of cryonics with the eugenics movement, freezing's increased popularity since the 1960s, corporate investment in human oocyte cryopreservation to retain and profit off of "prime" female labor by postponing reproduction, and recent legislative decisions, all of which increasingly relocate reproductive agency from the individual to the state.

As Japan grapples with the pressing challenges of a super-aging society, understanding the lived experience of its older adults becomes imperative. This article centers on Diary of a Mad Old Man, a novel by renowned Japanese writer Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, written during the author's final years in post-World War II Japan. The text serves both as a reflection of its historical moment and as a precursor to the aging-related issues that would intensify after the 1970s. Employing a New Historicist approach, this study situates the novel's aging narratives within the broader postwar Japanese medical landscape, with a particular focus on biomedicine, the pharmaceutical industry, in-home nursing care, and medical pluralism-especially acupuncture. Special emphasis is placed on Japan's postwar transition from reliance on German pharmaceuticals to increasing confidence in its domestic pharmaceutical sector. The article argues that the biomedicalization of aging in postwar Japan increasingly pathologized old age, casting older adults as patients. However, this construction of patienthood was far from monolithic. Tanizaki's protagonist resists such categorization through his obsession with medical consumerism and his engagement with both biomedical and alternative therapies. By experimenting with various medications and treatments-while remaining impartial to them all-the protagonist emerges not as a passive recipient of care but as an informed and discerning consumer of medical interventions. These narrative accounts illustrate the capacity of older adults to navigate the rapidly changing medical landscape of postwar Japan and underscore the active roles patients can play in shaping their own healthcare experiences.