<p> Underscoring the extent to which narrative plays a part in how patients come to integrate their illnesses, and also underscoring the extent to which narrative fluency bears upon the physician-patient interaction, Rita Charon proposed the practice of narrative medicine. Charon defines narrative practice as medicine practiced with the narrative skills of &ldquo;recognizing, absorbing, interpreting, and being moved by the stories of illness&rdquo;. To this end, several medical schools now incorporate literary studies into their curricula as a means to promote ethical, compassionate, and holistic care.</p><p> This dissertation advocates the use of J. M. Coetzee&rsquo;s fiction as one means through which medical students and trainees can achieve the skills advocated by Charon, skills necessary for entering into the practice of narrative medicine. By guiding medical students and trainees through a careful examination of Coetzee&rsquo;s works instructors can help students to: 1) gain narrative fluency, 2) increase awareness of the themes facing ill, dis/abled, or aging patients, and 3) more compassionately inhabit the plights of those who present for care. Coetzee&rsquo;s fictional novels are particularly suited to such study. He utilizes a wide array of narrative structures. Inside his works, embedded meta-fictional elements are discovered vis-&agrave;-vis close reading, and such a discovery process becomes a means for building the clinical skills of close listening and attention. Furthermore, Coetzee&rsquo;s fictions are detailed and incisive, meticulously elaborating the experiences of his varied characters. Through indirection, Coetzee provides vicarious experiences of illness and suffering to developing physicians, experiences that become transferable to their future interactions with patients. Additionally, Coetzee&rsquo;s stories resist moralizing; rather, by <i>entraining</i> readers into the plights of his protagonists, he raises questions about the construction of self-story, the ethics of care, and innumerable motifs surrounding the condition of suffering.</p><p> Finally, as students traverse Coetzee&rsquo;s texts, opportunities arise to experience a bird&rsquo;s-eye view of the effect of &ldquo;narrative wreckage&rdquo; on protagonists. These opportunities will mimic those encountered in clinical practice as developing physicians interact with patients whose lives are changed by the advent of illness. By affording medical students and trainees these lessons, Coetzee&rsquo;s stories become a foundation from which competent, holistic, narrative practice can develop.</p>

Inaug.-diss.--Breslau. / Lebenslauf. "Nur ein teil der untersuchungen des verfassers ... deren veröffentlichung für eine spätere zeit vorbehalten wird": p. [2]. This larger work promised, appeared in 1904 as "Abhandlungen zur geschichte der medicin" hft VIII, under title: Medicinisches aus der altfranzösischen dichtung. "Thesen": 1 leaf at end.

Inaug.-diss.--Breslau. / Lebenslauf. "Nur ein teil der untersuchungen des verfassers ... deren veröffentlichung für eine spätere zeit vorbehalten wird": p. [2]. This larger work promised, appeared in 1904 as "Abhandlungen zur geschichte der medicin" hft VIII, under title: Medicinisches aus der altfranzösischen dichtung. "Thesen": 1 leaf at end.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

This thesis addresses the relationship between colonial literature and disease. Focusing on literary and medical texts written in and about the British Caribbean during the period 1764-1834, I use the framing concept of ‘medicalization’ to emphasize the cultural imperative to respond to colonial disease and to establish the points of intersection between literary and medical encounters with illness in the tropics. Recent interdisciplinary scholarship has examined a literary paradigm engaged with medical knowledge, and critics have embraced the idea of illness as an experience which is shaped by language and culture. There remains a critical gap, however, in accounts of medicine in terms of its generic characteristics, and of how literary forms impact upon medical knowledge. Furthermore, while several scholars have developed accounts of colonial disease in terms of their metropolitan literary repercussions, writing from the colonies has played only a subsidiary role. My interdisciplinary approach engages with disease, literature and medicine as forms of narrative. Understanding both disease and medicine as culturally constituted ‘narratives’, I situate them in relation to textual narratives, in order to address the relationship between literature and medicine in three key ways. Firstly, I consider the thematic and stylistic points of overlap between literary and medical rhetorical strategies; secondly, I examine the textual consequences of writing about illness, and, thirdly, I use the idea of ‘contagion’ to connect ideas about language and disease. By addressing not only the issues of why the vocabulary of medicine featured so prominently in colonial literary texts and how this medical impetus took shape, but also the effects of literary modes on medical textuality, I trace the points of conceptual and structural transfer between literary and medical writing.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1944. / Published also without thesis note. Vita. Bibliography: p. [124]-136.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1944. / Published also without thesis note. Vita. Bibliography: p. [124]-136.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1938. / Vita. Author's name on type-written slip mounted on t.p.: Christine Eleanor Petersen. Published also without thesis note. "Sources cited": p. [125]-132.

This thesis interprets The Book of Margery Kempe using a medieval medical approach. Through an interdisciplinary methodology based on a medical humanities framework, the thesis explores the significance of Kempe’s painful experiences through a broad survey of the human life cycle, as understood in medieval culture. In exploring the interplay of humoral theory, medical texts, religious instruction and life cycle taxonomies, it illustrates the porousness of medicine and religion in the Middle Ages and the symbiotic relationship between spiritual and corporeal health. In an age when the circulation of medical texts in the English vernacular was increasing, scholastic medicine not only infiltrated religious houses but also translated into lay praxis. Ideas about the moral and physical nature of the human body were thus inextricably linked, based on the popular tradition of Christus medicus. For this reason, the thesis argues that Margery Kempe’s pain, experience and controversial performances amongst her euen-cristen were interpreted in physiological and medical terms by her onlookers, as ‘pain-interpreters’. It also offers a new transcription of the recipe from B.L. Add. MS 61823, f.124v, and argues for its importance as a way of reading the text as an ‘illness narrative’ which depicts Margery Kempe’s spiritual journey from sickness to health. The chapters examine Kempe’s humoral constitution and predisposition to mystical perceptivity, her crying, her childbearing and married years, her menopausal middle age of surrogate reproductivity, and her elderly life stage. Medical texts such as the Trotula, the Sekenesse of Wymmen and the Liber Diversis Medicinis help to shed light on the ways in which medieval women’s bodies were understood. The thesis concludes that, via a ‘pain surrogacy’ hermeneutic, Kempe is brought closer to a knowledge of pain which is transformational, just as she transforms through the stages of the life cycle.

Le XIXème siècle est caractérisé par le progrès de la science et de la médecine: dans une société positiviste qui accorde toute sa confiance à la raison scientifique, la figure du médecin se professionnalise et l'approche thérapeutique change. Cela se reflète dans la littérature qui subit une sorte de «médicalisation».Cette recherche s'attache justement à la volonté de définir le médecin idéal au XIXème siècle à travers la morale médicale, qui plus tard deviendra déontologie, dans une période où les événements historiques, culturels et scientifiques changent profondément l'idée de «bon» et de «méchant».La thèse dresse un catalogue des personnages de médecins dans la production narrative de Capuana dans une taxonomie morale, distinguant les «bons», caractérisés par empathie et professionnalité ; les «méchants», caractérisés par égoïsme et ignorance ; les médecins aux marges, anonymes ou in absentia (à la fonction instrumentale) ; les «savants fous» qui se consacrent à des expériences complètement immorales ; les médecins confesseurs qui utilisent le pouvoir du logos comme une nouvelle approche thérapeutique.Le corpus examiné comprend une partie de la production narrative et romanesque de Capuana entre 1867, date de la publication de sa première nouvelle, Il dottor Cymbalus et 1911, date de la publication du recueil La voluttà di creare.Une partie de la thèse analyse le rôle instrumental du personnage du médecin, en particulier le personnage du Dottor Maggioli, qui apparaît dans plusieurs nouvelles. Il agit dans les textes en tant que médecin narrateur, moteur narratif et plot generator, représentant de la science et de la rationalité, témoin et garant de la vérité, mais surtout alter ego de l'auteur. À travers le Dottor Maggioli, Capuana montre son ouverture par rapport à l'idée de morale: d'un côté il condamne l'immoralité des médecins méchants, de l'autre côté il est attiré, en quelque sorte, par les médecins les plus perfides et les plus diaboliques, qui osent violer les lois de la Nature à travers la science. L'idiosyncrasie entre morale et expérimentalisme se révèle surtout dans les personnages des «savants fous», protagonistes des nouvelles typiquement fantastiques. L'élément fantastique chez Capuana est très particulier par rapport aux romans d'horreur et à la littérature gothique européenne. Le but de Capuana dans ses récits fantastiques n'est pas d'épouvanter le lecteur, mais de lui montrer un autre paradigme de réalité, dans lequel les règles de l'ordo naturalis du monde sont bouleversées, et la rationalité de la science positiviste cède la place aux phénomènes inexplicables, absurdes, et fantastiques. Dans ce monde, la morale change aussi et Capuana trouve un moyen pour justifier les méchancetés de ses personnages. Les expériences sur des cobayes humains (notamment des femmes) n'apparaissent pas aussi diaboliques aux yeux des lecteurs, parce qu'elles sont conçues comme possibles uniquement dans une réalité autre, fantastique.En conclusion dans la production de Capuana les personnages de médecins «bons» sont très rares, alors que les «méchants» sont nombreux, et même les perfides «savants fous» sont en quelque sorte justifiés. En effet la position de Capuana sur la question de la morale dans les sciences n'est pas du tout nette ni constante. Si dans les premières nouvelles, il admet l'expérimentation scientifique au nom du progrès, dans les recueils les plus récents, il aspire à une médecine renouvelée, sur l'exemple de son maître Angelo Camillo De Meis. Cette médecine voit dans la relation médecin-patient une nouvelle approche thérapeutique fondée sur la confiance réciproque et sur l'empathie, mais aussi sur le respect des droits humains et des lois de la Nature. / The 19th century is characterized by the progress of science and medicine: in a positivist society which awards all its trust to scientific reason, the doctor becomes a professional and the therapeutical approach changes. This is also reflected in literature, which undergoes a sort of “medicalization”. Plenty has been written on the relationship between science and literature, the role of literary malaises - most notably neuroses - and on physician-authors; however, one aspect has been neglected by critics: the morality of physician characters in literature. This research focuses on the desire to define the 19th century’s ideal doctor through medical ethics, one which later will become deontology, in a period where historical, cultural and scientific events are profoundly changing the idea of “good” and “evil”.The thesis draws up a catalog of physician characters in Capuana’s narrative work, setting up a moral taxonomy, distinguishing between the “good”, characterized by empathy and professionalism; the “evil”, characterized by selfishness and ignorance; the doctors at margins, anonymous or in absentia (instrumentally); the “mad geniuses” who devote themselves to completely immoral experiments; and the confessor-doctors, who use the power of logos as a new therapeutic approach.The corpus examined here includes part of Capuana’s literary work, between 1867, when his first novel Il dottor Cymbalus was published, and 1911, when the anthology La voluttà di creare was published.Part of this thesis analyses the instrumental role of physician characters, particularly Doctor Maggioli, who appears in many of Capuana’s novels. He acts in the texts as narrator, narrative engine, and plot generator, representing science and rationality, witness and warrantor of truth, but above all, the author’s alter ego. Through Doctor Maggioli, Capuana shows his proclivity towards the idea of morality: on the one hand he condemns the immorality of evil physicians, and on the other he is attracted, in a sense, to the most wicked and diabolical doctors, who dare violate the laws of Nature through science.The idiosyncrasy between morality and experimentation is revealed especially in the “mad genius” characters, protagonists of typically fantastic novels. Fantastic elements in Capuana’s work are very particular when compared to horror novels or Gothic European literature. Capuana’s goal with fantasy is not to frighten his readers, but rather show them another paradigm of reality, one in which the rules of the world’s natural order are upset, and the rationalism of positivist science gives way to unexplainable, absurd, and fantastic phenomena. In this world, ethics have also been upset, and Capuana finds a way to justify the wickedness of his characters. Experiments on human guinea pigs (noticeably women) no longer appear diabolical in the eyes of readers, because they are conceived as possible only in an other, fantastic reality.In conclusion, in Capuana’s work “good” physician characters are quite rare, while “evil” ones are numerous, and even wicked “mad geniuses” are justified in a sense. In fact, Capuana’s position on the subject of morality in sciences is not at all neat nor constant. If in his first novels he allows scientific experimentation in the name of progress, in his more recent anthologies, he aspires for a renewed medicine, following the example of his master, Angelo Camillo De Meis. This medicine sees in the relationship between doctor and patient a new therapeutic approach based on mutual trust and empathy, but also on the respect of human rights and the laws of Nature.