The Great Courses - Using Literature to Understand the Human Side of Medicine - Arnold Weinstein, Ph.D. Audiobook

Written by Arnold Weinstein, Ph.D.
Read by Arnold Weinstein, Ph.D.
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 7 hours and 30 minutes
Release Date: July 26, 1999

If medicine is viewed as the understanding and alleviation of human suffering, then it becomes more than a mere empirical, scientific pursuit, and literature offers a rich legacy of insight into human pain and healing. Since the time of the ancient Greeks and the Book of Job, illness and dying have been key themes in prose and poems. Many great writers - including Rabelais, Chekhov, and William Carlos Williams - were physicians themselves, while others - Sophocles, Moliere, Hawthorne, Dickenson, Kafka, and Fitzgerald - chose illness as a great theme. Professor Arnold L. Weinstein uses literature to explore this bond between medicine and the human spirit, including how our perceptions of disease and the role of medicine have been influenced over the ages.

This course explores the potential of literature to heighten our sensitivity to the personal side of such medical issues as disease, pain, trauma, and the care of the dying.

You will explore lessons that can be derived from works by Moliиre, Kafka, Poe, Ionesco, Tolstoy, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, as well as nonfiction by Susan Sontag and others. All have written about such issues as the stigma society attaches to disease, our perceptions of doctors, and the experience of death.

You will learn how the lessons of art can be applied to deepen and enrich the science of medicine and create a more humanistic approach to healthcare.