Stanford oncologist Charlotte Jacobs, MD, loved reading biographies as a child. But it wasn't until years later, while on sabbatical at Stanford, that she decided …
Tag: medicine and literature
Graphic medicine takes flight
A recent blog post on Somatosphere sparked my interest in the role that comics can play in the study and delivery of health care, an …
Physician writers share a “global perspective on healing”
When I saw that an event called "Medicine Around the World: Healing from a Global Perspective" was taking place on campus, I thought it would be …
Surgeon-author: “My intent is to let people know that the person next door could be intersex”
“How many of you know what intersex is?” surgeon and author Ilene Wong, MD, (who did her residency at Stanford and writes under the pen name …
Physician-author Abraham Verghese encourages journalists to tell the powerful stories of medicine
Stanford's Abraham Verghese, MD, greeted hundreds of journalists at the Association of Health Care Journalists 2015 conference last evening with a talk centered on the power of …
Remembering the strange vigils of war through poetry and dance
In his Civil War-era poem, “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field,” Walt Whitman describes watching over a soldier dying on the battlefield as a …
The value of exploring jellyfish eyes: Scientist-penned book supports “curiosity-driven” research
As an academic, I often encounter variations of the question "And so... what are you going to do with that?" In other words, why should …
Using graphic art to understand the emotional aspects of disease
When it comes to describing the feelings of hopelessness of depression, the fear and anxiety of having an operation or the unrelenting pain of a …
Abraham Verghese: “A saintliness in so many of my patients”
There's a quiet dignity that envelopes Abraham Verghese, MD. You can imagine other authors whose books have scaled to the top to be taken with themselves, …
Can science journals have beautiful prose?
Scientific journals are not known for being scintillating or inspiring reading. But could they be? A recent article in Nature elaborated on an online discussion …
"Deconstructed Pain:" Medicine meets fine arts
Stanford's medical school is just steps away from Stanford’s arts corridor, home to the Cantor Art Museum and the newly opened Anderson Collection at Stanford. This …
For group of Stanford doctors, writing helps them "make sense" of their experiences
At a Stanford Pegasus Physician Writers Forum last week, psychiatrist Shaili Jain, MD, told the 40-or-so attendees that writing and practicing medicine are synergistic. Medicine and motherhood: …
Abraham Verghese discusses stealing metaphors and the language of medicine at TEDMED
Few of us pay close attention to metaphors used in the language of medicine. Instead, our focus is typically on words relating to symptoms, test …
From post-WWII Russia To 7-year-old Giana Brown, a limb-lengthening method evolves
Giana Brown is one tough little girl. When she was 7 years old, an orthopedic surgeon, Jeffrey Young, MD, from Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, …
A surgeon battles her own unexpected complications
I first interviewed Stanford surgeon Sherry Wren, MD, a year and a half ago for an article about a course she taught to other surgeons on …
The operating room: long a woman’s domain
In my recent story for Stanford Medicine magazine on the transformational changes in surgery, I reported that “women were once personae non gratae in the …