Books published by University of California Medical Humanities Press

Imagining Vesalius is a collection of ekphrastic works - poetry, prose, watercolors and sculpture - celebrating De Humani Corporis Fabrica, the 1543 landmark anatomical atlas by Andreas Vesalius. Using the stunning woodcuts in this famous book as inspiration, writers and artists have contributed prose poems and art works on subjects ranging from a parent's autopsy to immortality through dissection, murder, organ donation to amputation to the role of women in dissection to the anatomy of gaze. Introductory essays discuss Vesalius's place in the history of medicine, Vesalius as seen by a modern day poet, and a contemplative reflection on Vesalius's contributions to the development of dissection. A section of translation presents seven poems to or about Vesalius by famous contemporaries or near contemporaries, including Philip Melanchthon and Jakob Balde. Four appear for the first time in English. A rich anthology of Vesaliana, Imagining Vesalius will prove of interest to readers and scholars alike, with its offerings in ekphrasis, literature and medicine, the history of medicine and late medieval studies in art, anatomy and medicine.

All of us live between peril and safety, danger and security, sickness and wellness, death and life. The threats range from a head cold to the Climate Change that endangers all life on earth. How may we consider such topics and create strategies and positive outlooks? The second half of the book discusses the Climate Change that threatens to disrupt the health of all humans and all life on planet Earth. Concepts in modern biology, physics, ecology, and religion suggest changes we can make locally and globally. As wonderful as modern medicine is, it is still largely materials-based. It could be extended, improved, and be more effective if it further drew on the resources of mind and energy in both caregivers and patients, indeed in all persons sick or well. Developments in Integration Medicine, Medical Humanities, and Health Humanities all help to widen the medical gaze.

This book contains descriptions of 22 persons, professors of medicine, many of them trained by Beeson, who write about their recollections of Paul Beeson. The book follows Beeson's life, from his birth, early childhood in Alaska, college at the University of Washington, medical school at McGill, and residency at the University of Pennsylvania, to and private practice with his father and brother in Wooster Ohio. Seeing that he was not very good at surgery, Dr. Beeson took a fellowship at Rockefeller Institute in New York City with Osswald Avery. He then served as Chief Resident to the renowned Soma Weiss at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital at Harvard, which led to the Chairmanships of the Departments of medicine at Emory, Yale, and Oxford, to a distinguished Professor at the VA in Seattle Washington. The book concludes with the speakers comments at Beeson's memorial service at Yale.

Soul Stories is an exploration of the boundaries of narrative within health and healing in the context of trauma and homelessness. It draws upon scholarly research across a range of disciplines, and is informed by Ensign's thirty years' experience as a nurse providing health care to people marginalized by poverty and homelessness, by her personal journey through homelessness as a young adult, and by her experience of teaching critical reflective practice to health science students. Soul Stories deepens our understanding of homelessness; trauma and resilience; gender-based violence; the role of narrative in health and healing; and ways we can humanize health care for patients, providers, and communities. It contributes to civically and community-engaged scholarship in the health humanities.

Threatened by sharp cuts in state government support and stagnant federal research funding, US public research universities are becoming fragile ecosystems. By charting flows of research dollars through a leading public research university-the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)-this book illuminates how such schools work to cope with these funding threats and how the challenges and coping strategies affect organization and direction of research. Academic leaders, faculty, administrators, and students will learn how a complex academic health center manages its revenues, expenses, and diverse academic cultures. For the first time, they can begin to understand arcane mysteries of indirect cost recovery, sponsored funds, capital investment, endowments, debt, and researchers' salaries.

For the first time, a book considers the doctor/patient relationship in the long period and from a broad geographical perspective. Historians, anthropologists and doctors reflect on the factors that, from the Classical age until the present, have altered the care relationship and the power relations embedded within it. The book also highlights that communication and narration, understood as constitutive aspects of care, are the elements which link the past to the present. From the encounter between religion and medicine to the centuries-long struggle between doctors and patients in defence of their respective positions, from medical dramas to efforts to humanize medicine, the book describes the doctor/patient relationship in all its cultural, transnational and transtemporal dimensions.

Do your doctors share what they have learned from you? Likely not! With little precedent for physicians to open up about the impact their patients have on their personal development, Heart Murmurs: What Patients Teach Their Doctors breaks tradition with a collection of stories by author and editor Sharon Dobie M.D. and 35 other physicians. Aware for years that her patients taught her at least as much as she gave them, Dr. Dobie's acknowledgement of this reciprocity led to this project. Grouped thematically, the stories encourage health care providers to think about their relationships with patients and through that reflection, to know themselves more deeply. They also take all readers from the specific to universal messages, asking all of us to see how we are changed within all relationships, doctor-patient or otherwise. These humanizing tales draw us back to basics: relationships matter for us all.