Week 4 Post


            This weeks content has a direct connection and relevance to my life as I suffered a knee injury while skateboarding in high school and was forced to undergo a series of MRIs before my surgery. Within Casini's Magnetic Resonance Imaging as Mirror and Portrait, the author discusses how there are aspects of the MRI experience which make it a performative, artistic one. Through the "the mirror placed inside the scanner, the condition of stillness" ( Casini 99), one is placed into a contemplative state. To me, this experience was akin to a body scan meditation, and I see MRI's as much a performance as I do a science. 

                



Adding on to this performative nature of medicine is the Hippocratic Oath, which is a document that doctors continue to enact and bind themselves to this day. I think it is extremely interesting how this document from antiquity continues to hold such prevalence in our culture today, and when one thinks about how nearly all doctors take this oath it becomes almost absurd. The fact that "its principles are held sacred by doctors to this day" is enough to make one stop and consider the performative nature of medicine. 


Bell's Palsy


This I think that this performative vibe present in medicine is played with in a novel way in Virgil Wong's paintings of various illnesses, where complex subjective experiences like pain are conveyed in an artistic manner which seems to represent the diseases in new ways that can make others understand. 


 Casini, Silvia. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as Mirror and Portrait: MRI Configurations between Science and the Arts. Ca’ Foscari Università di Venezia.

King, Helen. Hippocrates didn’t write the oath, so why is he the father of medicine? The Conversation. 2014. 

Stewart, Jeremy. MRI Scans. NHS. 2016. 

Tyson, Peter. The Hippocratic Oath Today. Nova. 2001. 

Wong, Virgil. Symptom Data Portraits. 2014











 

Comments

  1. ashaagarwal_desma9May 15, 2022 at 4:42 PM

    I loved how you tied your personal experience into the material being covered in class! It brings life to the course and shows the relevance of the topics we learn about. Great job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Quinn Winter Desma 9May 22, 2022 at 10:50 PM

    Hi John, I really appreciate how you were able to connect your personal experience to this week's topic. I also find it so interesting how a document as old as the Hippocratic Oath is, it is still so prevalent to doctors today and something they continue to rely on. Good post this week!

    ReplyDelete

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