Healing Arts: Medicine in History, Culture and the Arts

While Christie’s work includes a fair amount of violent murder methods, including stabbings, shootings, blunt force trauma, etc, she is perhaps best known for her use of poison. Nearly thirty novels see the hapless victims dispatched via poisons of many kinds, and even more include non-fatal poisons or sleeping draughts as part of the plot.
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Why does medicine use so many fifty-cent words? And where do they come from?
Join me on a deep dive into medicalese.

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Unnatural Death? Series
Did Vincent Van Gogh really commit suicide? Compelling evidence suggests otherwise...

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Healing Arts Podcast - Tudor Troubles Series

When Queen Mary I of England, daughter of Henry VIII, announced that she was with child, her subjects were overjoyed…and bewildered. Many were skeptical, due to her age and the recency of her marriage, and some were outright convinced she was either mistaken or delusional…because as they suspected, no royal baby ever appeared. 
The Queen’s Quickening: The Phantom Pregnancies of Mary I. First published in the Journal of Medical Humanities, by the Hektoen Institute of Medicine in Chicago, 2022 .

Did you know the ancient Egyptians performed surgery? Or that the Oracle of Delphi was hallucinating due to noxious gasses? Did you know what the 'madness' of King George III might have actually been about?
Welcome to the Healing Arts Podcast, all about the many fascinating ways medicine intersects with history, culture and the arts. I'll explore topics on the history of medicine, how medical terminology developed and influenced our language, and explore the close connection between medicine and the Greek and Roman pantheon. I'll also look at music, art, and classic literature.

Medicine has informed our fine art, literature, language and culture in so many ways. So if you like healing and the arts, then let's jump in.

Categories

Jane's Afflictions - Health and healing in Jane Austen’s Books and the Regency period in general

Tudor Troubles - Medicine, misdeeds and mysteries in the time of Henry VIII

Novel Treatment: Depictions of health and disease in literature

Body Language - Medical terminology and language

The Ancient World - The earliest medical discoveries and beliefs from around the far past.

Myths, Legends and Symbols - the origin of everyday symbols, terms and legends. 

Art and ailments - depictions of medical conditions in classic art.

Music, madness and maladies - how health matters affected our greatest composers and performers. 

Unnatural Death? A true-crime like investigation into medical mysteries in history, the art world and more.

A Medical Miscellany: Medicine in history, literature and modern life.