Very little research has attempted to describe normal human variation in female genitalia, and no studies have compared the visual images that women might use in constructing their ideas of average ...

Narrative Medicine as originated by Rita Charon began as an attempt to redress the unopposed biomedicalisation of the medical profession. Although the movement has been self-positioned as a corrective ...

Medicine is inherently a humanistic profession. However, recent studies have emphasised the need for medical students to develop humane attitudes and behaviours. Breaking bad news is also one topic ...

The papers in this issue by Wall and Howath and colleagues provide a much-needed focus on the ways in which images of genitalia carry implicit messages about what is normative and thus acceptable (see ...

In this paper some of the intriguing links between the arts and medicine are explored. As a starting point I consider the notion of whole person understanding as articulated by Downie in an article ...

This paper addresses a current debate in the bioethics community between principlists, who consider that principles are at the heart of moral life, and narrativists, who see communication at its core.

In 1885, Holloway Sanatorium, an asylum for the ‘mentally afflicted of the middle classes’ opened in Egham, Surrey, 20 miles outside London. Until 1910, photographs of about a third of the ...

Medicine has been said to be both a science and an art. Many practitioners regard this statement as containing an element of “either/or”. A brief look at what scientists and artists have written about ...

Among the growing number of works of graphic fiction, a number of titles dealing directly with the patient experience of illness or caring for others with an illness are to be found. Thanks in part to ...

During the course of a long artistic career, the work of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) passed through a number of stages. This article concentrates on his representation of the human body prior to the ...

Crime is a popular genre of fiction, widely read but sometimes seen as ‘throwaway’. Disregarding this type of fiction because it is seen as low quality does not take into account its value to readers.